Beneath the Portrait
by QueenHimiko
Summary: A cured Zelgadis goes to Zefiel City and reunites with Lina and Gourry. But they are hiding a secret that could lead to the destruction of their friendship. In the same continuity as "What Might Have Been" and "Of Cursed Lands and Cursed Lines" but you can follow along without having read them. And novels continuity as well.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: I do not own "The Slayers," I just play in the sandbox.**

While the Sorcerer's Guild in Zefiel City was a beautiful work of architecture, Zel found that for once in his life he was more interested in staring at the people bustling about than the building. No matter how harshly he chastised himself for it he found he could not stop. He knew he was being silly. Just because he briefly saw a young woman who bore a striking resemblance to some people he used to know in this city several years ago didn't mean he would see her again.

Not to mention the people he had fought beside so many decades ago.

Slowly he made his way to the front desk, running into no tall blondes nor petite brunettes along the way. The clerk was a middle aged, harried looking man who briefly glanced at him when he approached. "How can I help you?" he asked as he pushed a stack of papers around his desk.

"I'm here to see Minerva the Blue." Zel explained.

"And you are?"

"Zelgadis the Grey." He said. It had taken some time, but he'd finally adjusted to having a color status.

"Zar…what?"

Zel shook his head. While he had gotten rid of his cursed body, he still had to contend with the unusual name his parents had bestowed on him and the people too stupid to get it right. With as much patience as he could muster he spelt it out, adding once he had finished, "I'm here to lecture about the process of separating chimeras."

That caught the clerk's attention, "Oh! You're the one! Your paper has caused quite the stir. I plan to attend myself."

Zel was still unsure how to respond to the enthusiasm that publishing the process on how to separate chimeras had created. Since becoming human again and going public, he had achieved a celebrity status unusual among researchers. Soon guilds from other cities were offering room, board, and traveling expenses for him to give a lecture and a demonstration, so that now rather than traveling from place to place looking for a cure and avoiding the public eye, he was traveling from place to place and giving speeches to packed crowds.

Fortunately the clerk saved Zel the trouble of having to respond by calling for a page. "Go ahead and have a seat." He instructed.

"Thanks," Zel said, wondering briefly if he should inquire about Lina, but before he could someone else had approached the desk.

Feeling silly, Zel took a seat, watching people as they came and went, feeling unusually anxious. When he received the invitation to speak at the Zefiel City Sorcerer's Guild he wasn't sure about taking it, for fear of not finding his friends happily settled in the area. That Lina hadn't personally reached out and invited him worried him, leading him to conclude that it was not their daughter that he briefly ran into a few years ago.

Still, he reasoned, there might be other reasons that she may not have extended a personal invitation. And as the time passed, the more curious he became. If only to put the questions to rest, he accepted. And now he waited anxiously, wondering if he might see them at any moment. Perhaps when he met Minerva the Blue he could ask about Lina?

The page returned and addressed him, "Zelgadis the Grey? Follow me."

Zel followed the page through the corridors, admiring the craftsmanship and care that had been taken to build the guild as he kept an eye out for people wandering around the corridors. It was getting late and already most people seemed to have left for the day, but there were still enough people coming through to warrant attention. The page took him into the library, which was no surprise. In her letter Minerva the Blue had identified herself as the Head Librarian of the Zefiel City Sorcerer's Guild.

The page led him into an office behind the circulation desk, and then further through some ornate doors. He knocked and then opened the door, and Zel's eyes widened as he got a good look at the woman sitting behind the desk. A woman who looked remarkably like the one that he had run into several years ago, right after he had been cured.

She was tall and wore sky blue robes and her long blonde hair pinned up. But while her bearing was more regal than the woman he had run into, she looked so much like Gourry Gabriev that the only thing he could conclude was that even if she wasn't the woman he had run into, she was definitely descended from him. "Zelgadis the Grey." The page announced as she stood to her full, remarkable height. "Minerva the Blue."

"Just Min," she said, extending a hand which he briefly shook as the page left and she indicated that he take a seat. "I've been looking forward to meeting you. I've heard so much about you."

He sat down as his brain struggled to process just what she had said as he wondered how to ask about her parentage. "You have?"

Min smiled, "Mom likes to tell stories."

Feeling that he would come off an idiot either way, he asked, "Do I know your mother?"

"She says you do." Min replied as she sipped her tea, "Mom and her stories, sometimes they seem so hard to believe, but there's so much evidence that backs her. And in any case, she talked about teaming up with you to defeat Shabranigdu even before you became a household name in the wizarding world. When your paper about separating chimeras hit the press it was evidence that there really was a chimera man named Zelgadis. If that part of her story was true, why not the part about Shabranigdu?"

"How are your parents doing?" Zel asked quietly as he relaxed. So he wasn't imagining things. Lina and Gourry had settled here and put down roots, evidently producing at least one successful child. The knowledge was heartening. After all of the terrible things he had seen in his life, it was nice to know that happy endings did exist.

But before any more could be said, the doors shot open with a bang and a familiar, petite brunette dressed in pink robes strode into the room, followed by another tall, blonde woman. "Sorry, Min, got held up, we'd better get the kids rounded up and to dinner before, oh, I didn't know you had company."

"It's okay, Mom. It's an old friend of yours, Zelgadis the Grey. He came to speak about separating chimeras."

Lina's eyes widened as she paled, not the reaction that Zel was anticipating. "Zel?" she said shakily, and was it his imagination, or was there a hint of fright in her eyes? It vanished quickly as she recovered behind a mask of polite neutrality, "How've you been?"

"Good." He said.

She looked him over, "Being human suits you."

"Thanks. And pink suits you."

Lina blushed as she folded her arms over her pink robes and Min and the woman who was obviously her sister giggled, "Dammit, Minerva, this is why I told you not to invite him! Now my dirty little secret is out! I'll have to hang you out to dry when we get home!"

"Come on now Lina. Pink suites you, really! Helps keep you looking young." He said, unable to suppress his amusement as he wondered if Lina really had pleaded with her daughter to avoid inviting him for fear of him learning about her color status.

She glared at him, "You know, I always did want another go at you with my powers at full strength."

He shook his head, "I'll stop, you'd win. My magical capacity was greatly reduced when I was cured, lower even than what it was before I became a chimera. They had to pull a few strings to get me a color status because I can't even perform a fireball anymore. Ironically now that I have one I'm not much of a sorcerer anymore."

"Really? That's fascinating. What other side effects have you experienced since you were cured?" Min asked as her sister groaned.

"If you three are going to get nerdy, then can we at least grab some food? It's almost dinner time."

Lina clapped her on the back, and Zel studied her. She could easily have been Min's twin, but definitely less polished. She looked like she lived on the road and screamed Black Magic User. And he was fairly sure that she was not the one he had run into several years ago. The one he had run into looked ready to pick a quarrel with the world, while the woman in the room looked as though she just wanted to be left alone. He wondered just how many daughters Lina and Gourry had had, "Attie's right. No time to warn Julie to set another plate, but you are having dinner with my family, Zel. And you'll be staying with us."

"Sounds good." Zel said, feeling relieved at Lina's gesture of hospitality even as he couldn't shake the feeling that it was forced as Min went to her desk and gathered some items.

"Well, it looks like you've met Min, and this is Attie." Lina said, introducing her other daughter as Min indicated that she was ready to leave. "You're lucky to meet her." Lina said as they exited Min's office and she locked it. "She travels often and isn't home much."

"Sounds like her parents." Zel said. "How is Gourry?"

"What makes you think he's their father?" Lina replied and they walked down the path that would lead them out of the guild.

"No use denying it, Lina. Those two look just like him."

Lina chuckled, "At least they got my brains. Well, all but Attie."

Zel glanced at Attie, who shrugged nonchalantly, "If she calls you an idiot it just means she loves you all the more." She explained a Min nodded in agreement.

"Anyway," Lina continued as they left the guild, "Gourry is doing well. He took over my parents' store. Attie runs the supply lines. He's starting to slow down a little though."

A strange look passed over her face before she continued, "He's starting to teach Attie the ropes. Keep the business in the family."

"And it looks like you've been keeping busy with the guild."

She nodded, "Research mostly."

"And you're the head librarian." He said to Min.

"I found that there are too many things that are fascinating about magic to confine my interest to a tiny branch. This way I get to keep tabs on all of the research going on in differing fields."

Lina patted her arm affectionately as they walked through the city streets. As always, despite her often harsh words just how deeply she cared for those around her leaked through her actions. Swiftly they moved into a residential area. "How many…" Zel started to ask, but was interrupted by the shrieking of a group of children who had been playing on a playground by a school and were now running towards them.

Four children to be precise, and Zel's eyes widened in surprise as they suddenly swarmed the three women with shouts of "mom", "grandma" and "Aunt Attie!"

"Okay, settle down!" Lina exclaimed as she grabbed the hand of a small girl, who looked at Lina and proclaimed, "I'm hungry!"

"We'll be home soon." Lina said as Min got the three boys under control.

"I must say, Gourry's genetic influence is strong." Zel commented, "Are all four yours?" he asked Min.

"No, just the boys." She explained, as she pointed to the oldest who appeared to be about nine or ten, "This is Orion, that one is Henry." She said, indicating the middle one who could not have been older than seven. "And my baby, Wally."

Wally, who looked to be about five, scrunched his face, "I'm not a baby mom!"

Min smiled as she stroked his golden curls, "Boys, this is Mr. Zelgadis. He used to go on adventures with your grandparents."

"Hi!" they said.

Zel smiled, a feeling of warmth coming over him. After years of children running away screaming from him if they caught a glimpse of his appearance, being able to talk to them without being treated like a monster was something he never felt that he would get used to, even if he wasn't sure how to interact with them. It was one of the best things about being fully human again. "Is she yours?" he asked Attie, indicating the girl who was walking hand in hand with Lina and appeared to be Wally's age.

He wasn't sure what was so funny about what he had said, but everyone was laughing.

"How is it you always phrase it?" Min said as she put a hand on her sister's back as Attie stiffened. "'I don't have time for men, let alone children.' I've yet to see Attie give a man the time of day, let alone some time at night."

Lina put her arm around the little girl's shoulder, "This is Pomona, my youngest."

Zel's eyes widened, "H-how many more do you have?"

Lina scrunched up her face in concentration, "Thirty-one? Thirty-three? I lose count."

"Stop it, Mom!" Pomona said with the sternness that only a five-year old could muster, "There's only one more."

"I know that. But I like seeing the look on Zel's face." Lina explained, "Looks like Pomona is going to keep me honest. The only one you've yet to meet is Dianna, my oldest. She should be at the house, unless she got called away."

Zel stared at Pomona, mystified at how Lina and Gourry had managed to have a child younger than their grandchildren, but decided not to pry as the children started running ahead, eventually veering from the street and into the lawn of a handsome cottage.

"This is my house." Min explained, "The clan here gathers to eat. We have a very good cook, Julie."

Min indeed seemed to have done well for herself. The grounds were well maintained and the house looked very comfortable. When they entered he realized it was even larger than he would have suspected just seeing it from the front, and rather well furnished.

From down the hallway he could hear the shouts of children enthusiastically greeting their grandfather. Soon Zel could see Gourry wrestling with them, his hair now white, his expression as gentle as ever. "Kids, now be careful with your grandfather." Lina said warningly.

"I'm fine, Lina." He said as Henry and Wally dangled off his back while Pomona had wrapped her arms around his waist as he gave her a big bear hug. Then he looked at Zel. "Were we expecting company?"

Lina sighed at his manners, "We are now. Do you remember Zelgadis?"

"How could I forget him?" Gourry asked, "So, are you a friend of Zel's?"

Lina groaned, "This is Zel. Remember, I told you he found his cure?"

His blue eyes widened, and Zel laughed, "Good to see you haven't changed."

"Has anyone told Julie to set another plate at the table?" an irritated voice asked, and Zel turned to find another Gourry clone behind him. "Extra company when she's not expecting it upsets her so."

"I'll go, Di." Min said quietly.

Dianna walked in and stared at Zel unabashedly, causing him to blush awkwardly. "So you're the callous chimera. Tell me, did my mother really take down Shabranigdu, or has she been stringing us along for years?"

In an instant Zel became convinced that she was the one he had bumped in to a few years ago. "The stories are true. I saw her defeat Shabranigdu with my own eyes."

Dianna smiled appraisingly, "Good to know. I'm Dianna, and I am looking forward to hearing you speak."

"Thanks." He said, and then noting her robes, "Are you a healer?"

"Yes, and I focus on midwifery." She explained, "And Mrs. Root is due to pop any moment now. I'm hoping I can make it through dinner without being called away, I am hungry!"

Min returned, "My husband won't be joining us, I'm afraid, he's tied up at work, but Julie says dinner is ready so we'd best make our way to the dining room."

As the group poured out of the living room, Zel was held back by Gourry, who whispered, "Don't take Di personally. She's going through a bad spot right now." He lowered his voice even more, "Her divorce was finalized yesterday."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." Zel said, even as he found that he didn't mean it. He felt himself intrigued by Dianna, and while many would have found her brisk manner off putting he was oddly attracted to it. He watched as Gourry took a seat beside Lina and pulled her to him for a brief kiss on the head before he started to load up his plate, and the mental image of finding his former comrades in arms his in-laws flashed before his mind, along with the terrifying possibility of Lina becoming his mother-in-law.

Zel took a seat and resolved to keep his distance. Unfortunately he found himself seated beside Dianna, and fielding her rather intelligent questions about his adventures with her parents. In some ways it was odd and baffling. Back when he fought beside her parents, Dianna had not even been born, nor had Lina and Gourry even been romantically involved at that point. Hell, both of them had been younger then than Dianna was now. But he had aged so slowly in his cursed body that for all intents and purposes he appeared to be her age, even as his life experience vastly outpaced hers.

Pursuing her romantically would be ludicrous he told himself as the children excused themselves from the table and ran off to some other part of the house to play as the adults got up and made to move into the sitting room.

"Is something wrong, Attie?" Min asked, noting that Attie had not eaten much of her food.

"I had a large lunch." She explained as she sat on a very plush chair.

"I never ate as well as I did when I was on the road constantly." Lina suddenly reminisced.

Gourry laughed, "I remember the food bills!"

"No you don't." She snarled as she raised a hand to punch him, but he pulled her to him so that they ended up resting together companionably on the love seat. Zel was suddenly hit with a feeling of overpowering want for what Lina and Gourry had. For decades he had forsaken people for his cure. And now that he had his cure he had no one to share his life with. Try as he might the ghost of what he could have had with Amelia had been hard to shake. But now for the first time his interest was seriously peaked in another woman, and he found himself summoning all of his restraint to keep his mind off Dianna.

Besides, he told himself, it had taken decades for Lina and Gourry to build the family that they had. It wasn't as if he could wish it into existence for himself. It would take time, granted, it would never happen if he didn't start pursuing a relationship with _someone._

He stole another glance at Dianna. If he pursued a woman closer to his age it would look awkward because she would appear to be several decades older than him. And she would likely be past childbearing age. The more he thought about it the more it made sense to pursue someone younger, even if the age gap might make things awkward at times. They could grow old together and still have the possibility of having a family. In that case, why not Dianna?

But did Dianna even want a family? Strange, he noted, she didn't appear to have children of her own. Unless they were with her ex-husband. Oh, he had so many questions he wanted to ask her away from the eyes and ears of her parents! He struggled to find an excuse to be with her alone to ask her to dinner when someone knocked on the door, and soon a butler (Min really had done well for herself!) came in to tell Dianna that Mrs. Root had gone into labor and she was needed immediately.

"Perfect timing." Dianna said as she set her drink on the table, "I just need to get my stuff."

Dianna went off into the house as Min asked him if he wanted more tea as the sound of children playing rang through the home. Zel wondered if he should offer to walk Dianna to Mrs. Root's, but he would have no way of figuring out how to get to Lina and Gourry's home.

"So, where all have your travels taken you, Zel?" Lina asked.

"Oh…" Zel was broken off by the sounds of a masculine voice booming from the hallway, "What are you doing here?"

"Oh no." Min said as she got up, followed by her parents and Attie, "Drake!"

"Just gathering my stuff, it's not a problem, is it?" he could hear Dianna snapping back down the hallway.

Zel wasn't sure what exactly to do, but curiosity got the better of him and he got up to follow them. It didn't take long for them to reach what looked to be a playroom. The four children were frozen in position as they watched the adults. The man was rather official looking, and Zel had the feeling that he was elected to some important office, and he was looking at Dianna with hatred, and she returned his malice in kind.

"You know you're not to be alone with the children!" the man continued.

"Drake," Min said calmly, putting herself between him and Dianna, "She's leaving on a housecall, she was just gathering her stuff."

"What's she doing leaving her stuff in the playroom in the first place?" Drake pointed out.

Min bit her lip as she folded her arms across her stomach and looked at Dianna questioningly. To his surprise a quick scan told Zel that her parents and Attie were looking at her just as admonishingly. Dianna huffed in aggravation as she grabbed her bag, "I don't have time for a game of twenty fucking questions. Don't wait up for me."

And she barreled out of the house before anyone else could say anything, taking a good deal of the tension with her. Pomona walked up to Gourry and he reached down to pick her up, "You okay?" he asked.

She nodded as she lay her head on his shoulder and Lina patted her back, "It's getting late."

"Yeah, we'd best get this one to bed." He agreed.

"You okay, boys?" Drake asked, his demeanor softening, but Zel couldn't shake the feeling of dislike for him. His behavior was completely uncalled for.

"We're fine." Orion said, "She didn't do anything."

Drake patted him on the head. "I'm sorry to surprise you, Min, I took the back way in and found her in the room alone with them and…"

Min patted him on the arm, "Drake, we have a guest. This is Zelgadis the Grey. And this is my husband, Drake Cecil, Chief Advisor to the Eternal Queen."

Zel's eyebrows shot up. Min had indeed done well for herself he figured as he reluctantly shook his hand. "Welcome." Drake said, "And while you're here her majesty desperately welcomes an audience with you. We've heard so much about your work."

"Thank you." Zel said as he tried to keep the stiffness from his voice as he pulled his hand away as soon as he could, unable to shake his dislike of the man.

Drake smiled awkwardly, "I'm sorry about the outburst."

"We have to be going actually." Gourry said. "Sorry to have to rush when you just got in."

Gourry seemed as calm and friendly as always, which baffled Zel further. Drake had been horribly rude to Dianna!

"I apologize for being so late. These negotiations are going to be the death of me!" Drake said, "Anyway, boys, say goodbye."

Zel watched as the family went for a round of hugs and kisses, baffled by the complete lack of acrimony any of them felt towards Drake. Zel was glad when he finally left the house with Lina, Gourry, Attie and Pomona. No one said anything for a few awkward moments until Attie addressed Pomona, "Since Mr. Zelgadis will be staying here tonight, I'll get to have a slumber party with you."

Pomona lit up, "Really! Cool, but don't hog all of the covers."

"I'm sorry to force you out of your room." Zel said.

Attie shrugged, "I had to share with Min growing up. I've never gotten used to having my own room."

Pomona asked Attie another question, and Zel walked a little up ahead to join Lina and Gourry. "What was that about there?"

Gourry looked at Lina, his worried expression a contrast to her blank one. "Dianna has spells." Lina finally explained.

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that she can't be alone with children."

Zel felt his temper prick. "The spells can't be too bad if she holds down a job."

Gourry folded his arms across his chest as a grimace of pain briefly flashed across his features while Lina stroked his hair. Finally she said quietly, "Look, I noticed the way you were looking at Di during dinner. And don't even think about it with her. And I'm telling you this as your friend, not her mother."

Zel flushed and felt his temper flare as she shook her head, "If it were Attie I would be okay with it. A little befuddled, but okay with it. But don't get involved with Di. She'll only bring you misery."


	2. Chapter 2

Zel could not stop staring at the door. At first he could not determine what it was that was bothering him about it, but then it hit him. Most doors locked from the inside to keep unwanted people out. This one locked from the outside, presumably to keep people in.

He shifted awkwardly in the bed, wondering if Gourry had just had a blonde moment when he installed it. But he could not shake the feeling that there was a more disquieting reason. One related to the strange note that the evening had ended on and connected to Dianna. Hadn't this room been hers growing up?

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. Lina and Gourry lived in a cottage that while definitely less grand than Min's was actually much more comfortable. The furniture was old and obviously well used but also well cared for. In the kitchen there were cuts on the wall marking the height of their daughters. Zel had the feeling that every piece of furniture, scratch, and mark had a story behind it that Lina would be too happy to divulge if given the chance.

Including the lock on the door.

Yet by the time he had arrived at their house the previous evening he was in a sour mood with his former friends over the baffling treatment of their oldest daughter. After Lina and Gourry had gotten Pomona down for the night, Attie had asked Lina to take a walk with her, leaving him alone with Gourry. After a polite conversation that never dived below surface level they'd retired to their rooms. Lina and Attie still had not returned.

Part of him warred with being magnanimous. He was intruding into their lives after decades apart, and it was only natural that they wouldn't want to share everything with him. And certainly if they took such precautions with Dianna they must have a good reason.

What those could be, though, were troubling him.

He heard the door to the master bedroom open and close, followed by the sounds of someone puttering in the kitchen. Zel wondered what Gourry was doing up in the dead of night fixing a cup of tea, but that mystery at least was quickly solved. Soon he heard the front door open. "Hey." He heard Gourry say, "How'd it go?"

He heard the scraping of a chair on the hardwood floor, "Another healthy girl." He heard Dianna say as she let go of her bag with a loud thunk. "Mother and baby are fine. My track record is as ever perfect. Only damn thing I have left going for me. And you didn't have to fix me a cup."

"If no one is there to take care of you, how are you going to take care of all of your patients?" Gourry asked. "Besides, I worry about you. You look so tired."

"Well I don't have anyone else expected to pop, so I should be able to get some solid sleep." Dianna said, "Let me guess, though, my room is occupied."

Zel felt guilty as Gourry said, "I can walk you to your aunt's."

"You really think something would happen to Pomona with Attie there if you let me stay the night?"

There was a pause in the conversation, and when Dianna spoke her voice was heavy with resentment, "Fine, I know, can't take risks given my situation." She slapped her fists against the table, causing the cups to clatter in their saucers, "Dammit I wouldn't even be back under your roof if I had been able to make it work with Kenneth!"

"Which part of you is talking now?" Gourry asked calmly.

"Fuck it, I don't give a damn."

"You can't afford not to care." Gourry said firmly. "Come on, I'll walk you to your Aunt Luna's."

"Fine." She said, and he heard them stand up and move towards the door. It opened and closed behind them, and as they walked away Zel could just barely discern her saying, "Mrs. Root has been married to her husband for as long as I was to Kenneth. And they have six children! I couldn't even manage to have one healthy one."

Their voices and footsteps faded away as Zel pondered over what he had overheard. He had almost fallen asleep when the front door opened again and he heard Attie say quietly, "I just never thought it would happen to me. I was never interested in such things."

"You are human you know." Lina said, "It's only natural to want such things. Atalanta Gabriev, you are allowed to fall in love."

"But if Di…"

"Don't worry about that." Lina said.

"She's been so unsteady lately."

Lina sighed, "I have a bad feeling that the confrontation is going to come sooner rather than later. And while I dread it, we can't walk on egg shells around her. You have your own life to lead. If you're in love, be in love and enjoy it. Let your father and I worry about Dianna. Now I'm exhausted, night."

"Night."

* * *

On the road breakfast tended to be a leisurely affair. This was not the case in the Gabriev household. Thankfully Attie had had the gumption to wake up early to make bacon and toast. Soon doors were being thrown open and slammed closed as everyone rushed with toast in their mouth to get dressed, find their belongings and get ready to go to their various obligations.

"Your mom is going to kill me." Gourry said as he looked at the clock.

"Don't come crying to me, that's what you get for sleeping in!" Lina snapped, "I'll take Pomona to school."

"Thanks!" he said as he gave her a quick peck on the lips before finding Pomona to wish her a good day.

Not long after he left with Attie, leaving Zel with Lina and Pomona. "I'll take you to the guild, and I can show you my team." Lina said as they finally set out, "Then I'll leave you with Min to work out the details of your speaking engagement. I'm having lunch with some guild big whig I'm afraid, but…"

"No worries, I think I can take care of myself for lunch." Zel said, "But what's this about a research team?"

"Oh, well," Lina said, glancing around her, "Since you already know about that spell I'll tell you. But you've got to keep it quiet. Officially I'm conducting serious research into faerie souls. In actuality I'm conducting research into the Lord of Nightmares."

"What!" Zel exclaimed.

"Shh!" Lina said, "And don't worry. I'm the only one on my team with the capacity to cast any of those spells. It was chosen very carefully. And together we've pooled some very interesting…"

From the right they heard Min yell, "Mom!"

"Morning." Lina said a bit stiffly to her as her grandsons ran over to greet her. Zel wondered if Lina was still miffed at Min for inviting him.

"Good timing." Min said.

"Yes." Lina said, "Sleep well?"

"Stayed up later than I meant."

"Me too." Lina said as the school came in sight. Zel glanced at the grounds and frowned. He wouldn't exactly tout his credentials at figuring out the ages of children, but at a glance it appeared as though the amount of five year olds on the grounds vastly eclipsed any other age group. In fact, he was fairly sure that if he took the time to sort the children by age, he would find that there was one five year old for every other child aged six to nine!

They reached the front of the school and Lina knelt down to give Pomona a kiss and wish her a good day. Min's older boys raced off to the playground before they could suffer the indignity of saying goodbye to their mother and grandmother in front of their friends, but Wally endured it as Zel studied the kids on the playground. There was no question about it. The amount of little kids running around greatly outnumbered the older ones.

Pomona and Wally ran off to join the others kids. "That's it, they're just going to have to build a new school for them." Min observed. "Drake keeps pushing, but the city elders say it's a waste for just one overly large class."

"Why is their class so large?" Zel asked as they started moving to the guild again.

"Oh that? That's Min's fault." Lina said.

Min groaned, "Yeah, I'm never going to live that down."

"I'm surprised you didn't hear about it." Lina added.

"Offers from as far away as the kingdom of Dils came to send our town an emergency supply of pickles and ice cream!" Min said.

"And we had to import midwives from other parts of the country to help." Lina said.

"I'm still confused." Zel said.

"I guess it was six years ago now I was searching the old archive and found a beautiful goddess statue." Min said, "I decided to put it on display without realizing what it was. From there things got interesting."

"Interesting." Lina chuckled. "Finds a fertility statue and 'interesting' is the adjective she uses."

"It's not my fault some idiot mislabeled it!" Min defended.

"You're so smart you should have known just by looking at it!" Lina insisted, "When the damn thing had bigger breasts than that girl I used to travel with…"

"It's not like I ever met her. And anyway," Min maintained, "Any woman of child bearing age who got within five thousand feet of it was knocked up by the end of the month."

"Damn thing nullified sterility spells and even cured several women of infertility." Lina added. "So that's why we have Pomona."

"And we have Wally."

"And just about every woman in this city has a five year old." Lina added.

"And the statue is now buried in a deep vault in a place that shall not be named." Min said, "Oh, some healers know where it is if a woman wants to seek its help to experience the many blessings of pregnancy of course."

Zel let out a whistle as he chuckled, "I'd wondered. I would have liked to have seen the look on your face when you found out, and Gourry's face."

Lina smiled slightly, "Oh, I was mad at first. But it's been a good thing. I was indisposed for months after Dianna was born so I didn't get to have those first few months with her. And with Min and Attie I had other children to care for. I was never able to have that one on one time with an infant before, and having gone through it three times I was a lot more confident in my abilities to be a mother. Not to say it wasn't hard starting all over again. Or strange to have my own daughter deliver me."

"You must really trust her." Zel said.

"Of course I trust her." Lina said, her voice heavy with motherly pride that was completely at odds with her statement of the misery that being with Dianna would bring the previous evening, "She's the best midwife ever. Never lost a mother. Sometimes with the babies there's just nothing to be done, but every mother under her care has made it through."

Zel was silent as he wondered about asking why, if Dianna could be trusted with seeing women through childbirth, couldn't she be trusted with actual children. But he had a feeling he wouldn't get any answers. Besides, there was another thing that was troubling him. "Dianna doesn't have children." He noted.

Lina and Min exchanged a glance. "No, she can't." Lina replied, and then she sighed, "I guess it's not exactly a secret. Everyone knows. She always miscarries half way through. The whole city getting pregnant must have seemed the cruelest joke the world could have played on her, especially when she had her seventh miscarriage while the rest of us carried to term." Lina then changed topics so swiftly that Zel barely had time to process it, "Anyway Min, what's on your schedule today?"

Min detailed her schedule as they entered the guild, and eventually decided to meet Zel in the afternoon to finalize the details for his lecture. Min headed off to the library and Lina directed Zel to follow her to the catacombs. They talked about his work as they walked deeper and deeper into the depths of the earth, and finally Lina exited the stairwell and took him past the graves of Zefiel City's most renowned sorcerers and finally to a room nestled behind the grave of Consultia the Yellow. Zel didn't think that he could find his way back without help, much less find his way there on his own, though he suspected Lina knew a quicker and more direct route to get there. As a place for conducting top secret research, it was solid.

And comfortable. Despite being in the catacombs the room was well constructed, solid, and large. Especially considering it was only occupied by four people. "Good morning," Lina said perkily as her crew looked surprised at the visitor, "This is an old friend from my travels, Zelgadis the Grey."

A whisper of excitement rang through the group, and Lina pointed to a woman who looked to be a few years older than her, "And this is Gretelle the Purple," she then indicated a woman who looked to be in her early thirties, "And Phoebe the Orange," and then she pointed to two men who looked to be in their late twenties, "And Rigel the Green and Morris the Silver. And that's my team!"

Soon her team was tripping over each other to ask about the details of his research. It was late in the morning when they had exhausted their questions and he started asking about theirs. They were guarded, and often glanced at Lina first to make sure they had clearance, and Zel strongly suspected there was a lot of interesting tidbits he was missing, but he was impressed with the research that was being done and the safeguards put into place. The Giga Slave was not a spell anyone wanted in the hands of any careless sorcerer after all.

As it got closer to lunch time her team invited him to eat with them, and seeing as Lina had plans, he agreed. It wasn't until they were seated at the restaurant with their orders in place and Lina far out of earshot that Morris turned to him and asked, "Have you met Dianna?"

"Morris." Gretelle said warningly.

"It's an innocent question!" Morris defended. "So, have you?"

"I have." Zel said, scarcely believing his luck. Maybe he could get further with her team than he could with his old friends in determining the mystery that was their oldest daughter and just how severe her problems were.

"What did you think of her?" Morris asked.

Unbidden Zel felt himself blush a little. Morris and Rigel laughed while Phoebe sighed, "Like moths to the flame."

"Huh?" Zel said.

Phoebe rolled her eyes, "She has her charms."

"Charms!?" Morris interposed, "She's the most beautiful woman I've laid eyes on."

"But she's also not right!" Phoebe maintained.

"And maybe we shouldn't be discussing our boss' family." Gretelle warned.

"If he doesn't hear it from us he'll hear it from someone else." Rigel countered, "And it's not anything against Lina. She did the best she could with what she was dealt."

The waitress came with their food, and once they were settled Zel tossed out, "I hear that she has spells."

Phoebe and Rigel shuddered, "That's a polite way to put it." Phoebe said. "I went to school with her. We were all terrified of her. Especially if we got a higher grade on a test than she did."

"Yet she manages to hold down a job as a midwife, so it can't be that bad."

Phoebe looked nervously at her plate, "It doesn't really relate to her work. Look, we went to the guild together. Learned every spell together. Though I would hardly say we were friends. When I got the hang of Diem Wind before she did, she just exploded. Tried to choke me to death and trashed the classroom. Then she tried to entice me into the woods with her for weeks after words, and I was terrified. I told Lina and it never happened again.

"I mean as she got older she got better at controlling the rage. And I just don't think it factors in when she's working. She's so focused on seeing the mother and baby through it alive that nothing sets off that rage. That said, when I had my son, I couldn't shake the feeling that she enjoyed seeing the pain I was in. Even Lina said as much after she had Pomona."

Feelings of horror and confusion rose within Zel as he asked, "But if that's the case how does she…"

"She's very good at what she does." Phoebe said, "Never lost a mother, and the only infants she's lost have been born with such obvious birth defects no one could fault her. And she's been practicing for more than a decade now, add to it the fertility statue debacle and the sheer amount of women she was delivering at the time. Statistically it's impossible really. In other words, she should have lost several mothers by now but hasn't. That's why women continue to go to her, despite everything. Especially if they have a history of high risk, dangerous pregnancies."

"She's just more motivated than the other midwives." Gretelle said, "Lina nearly died after she was born, and I think she's always felt guilt even though it turned out all right, knowing what that would have done to her father. She wanted to make sure no woman was lost in childbearing and made it her mission."

Morris laughed, "You're leaving out the good parts!"

"Don't even!" Gretelle snapped, "You weren't even born then, and I was an adult and remember everything. Those rumors are nonsense."

"Rumors?" Zel asked.

"But Gretelle, how can you explain the fact that Lina is alive? Granny Vera, the midwife who delivered her, has said that Lina should not have survived the ordeal."

"I don't know, Lina has a tendency to survive things she shouldn't." Zel observed.

"Not this." Morris said, "They say that for months she lingered between our world and the next, her body here but her mind gone. Too much blood loss. And then a stranger visited them, and Lina miraculously recovered."

"Stranger?" Zel repeated as gooseflesh started to form on his arms.

"It wasn't a stranger." Gretelle said, "It was a relation of Gourry's."

"Sure he was." Phoebe muttered.

"He was! He's returned to Zefiel City several times. His name eludes me, though."

"Yeah, came back several times to check on his changeling child he saddled them. In exchange for healing Lina the man took their daughter and left a changeling in the infant's place so no one would ask questions." Morris said.

"That's enough of that!" Gretelle yelled.

Phoebe laughed, "Changeling? That makes no sense. No, they say that Gourry gave him the soul of his firstborn to save Lina. _That's_ why Dianna is such a sadist, she has no soul and knows no better."

Zel laughed, a deep genuine belly laugh, "Listen to yourselves! Changelings! Selling souls! I must admit you had be on the edge of my seat for a bit."

"Finally one of you is using their brains!" Gretelle said as she indicated him with her fork.

"All the same, I wouldn't go into the woods with her." Phoebe said with a shudder.

"Yeah, Lycus still can't talk about it without going into convulsions. That's why I say she's a changeling. She was spawned in the woods, and it's where she runs too when things get too much for her now. Which I guess is a step up from trashing classrooms and choking children." Rigel said. "Look, Gretelle, you're older. You don't realize how scared all of us were of her growing up. Still really."

"Well, she does have a temper." Gretelle conceded.

Morris snorted, "She makes Lina look meek and docile."

"Temper is putting it mildly." Phoebe said, "I still have the scars. And so does Min. Ever wonder why she always wears a choker?"

"Maybe because she has fine taste in jewelry?" Gretelle quipped.

"There's a scar from where Dianna tried to bite her throat out."

"What?" Zel exclaimed.

"Those 'spells.'" Phoebe said, putting a special emphasis on spells. "They had to send her off to her aunt's for a while, straighten her out. I think Luna did the best she could, made her as human as it's possible to be. But still. I mean, how many miscarriages has she had?"

"That's why I say she's a changeling!" Morris said.

"I've traveled this world extensively, and changelings don't exist." Zel said, wondering if there was any truth to the story that Dianna had tried to bite Minerva's throat.

"Exactly, and why I say she has no soul. After a while her body just rejects the baby." Phoebe said.

"Or there's something else going on." Gretelle countered, "Something far more innocent. I was never able to have children and my soul is good and intact. And enduring year after year of miscarriages would warp anyone's psyche a bit. I'm actually impressed that she and Kenneth made it as long as they did."

"Oh Gretelle," Phoebe said, wrapping her arms around her, "You're a dear and would never try to bite a baby's throat out of its neck! But there's something wrong with Dianna. Her psyche was warped way before the miscarriages."

"Well," Zel said, "You said that Lina nearly didn't make it when she was born. What if the blood loss also affected Dianna, but wasn't as obvious because she was so young?"

Gretelle snapped her fingers, "Finally, someone is talking some sense!"

"It's more than that." Morris persisted, "If it was that then how come Lina and Gourry never talk about what's wrong with her? You can smell the secret they're keeping."

Zel had to agree with that. "What parents like to talk about their child's failings?" Gretelle retorted.

"Still, are you going to deny that there isn't anything he would do for her?" Morris asked.

Zel bit his lip, "No. But even then some things are impossible. Such as selling a child's soul."

* * *

Zel decided to take some time to tour the city before meeting with Min. Really he wanted some time alone with his thoughts as he tried to figure out what was true and what was not, and whether or not it really mattered. Yet no matter which angle he took, from simple brain damage at birth to something more nefarious, it would seem as if Dianna was deeply troubled. Even Dianna had admitted the need for precautions with her father, even as she chafed under them.

Precautions that, if there was any basis at all to the rumors, seemed prudent to take. Not to mention understandable why Lina and Gourry wouldn't want to talk about it. He wondered if Dianna really had tried to bite Minerva's throat…

He sighed as the familiar sense of unfairness grew within him. Decades ago he had met the perfect woman. But he hadn't been able to be with her then, and now that he could, she had moved on with her life. Try though he might no woman he'd met could compare to the princess he had fought beside so many years ago.

He strove to keep his frustrations under wrap. It was getting close to the time to meet with Min, and he started to head back to the guild when he thought about Xellos. Lina was deep in the cahoots with him at one point. Was it possible that there was a kernel of truth to the rumors, that Xellos had somehow restored Lina's health and in return damaged their infant daughter in some way?

But would a Mazoku even have the ability to heal a human? Or inclination?

One thing Zel was sure of, though, was that there was very little that Gourry wouldn't do for Lina. Still, the idea that Gourry would harm any child much less his own daughter was completely incongruous with everything he knew about the man. Yet Gourry was as devoted to Lina as Zel had been to finding his cure, and Zel knew that there was little that would stand in the way of stopping him.

But there was something else that was concerning him the more he thought about it. There was something familiar about what he was hearing. A pattern of angry outbursts and a taste for the pain of others. Zel shuddered and told himself he was truly grasping at straws to even consider that as a possibility. Yet the ramifications were simply too dire for him to ignore if they were true.

He took a deep breath as he reached Min's office and took a seat and accepted her offer of a cup of tea, noting as he did the thick black choker around her neck adorned with a shimmering sapphire. He went through the pleasantries, and agreed to her ideas on how to organize the lecture. As they were finishing up she freshened his cup of tea and observed, "You look shaken."

"I just heard some strange rumors about Dianna."

Without skipping a beat Min asked, "Which is it then, that she's a changeling or that she has no soul?"

Zel blushed, "I know it's ridiculous."

Min shook her head, "Dianna brought a lot of it on herself. Look, she has a temper and she's done some horrible things in its thrall. That's why we don't let her around the children. She gets mad, lashes out and doesn't care who she hurts. We adults can protect ourselves, but the children can't. Thankfully she's gotten better at managing it as she's gotten older.

"And here's the other thing about Di. She's completely devoted to her family and her patients and extremely skilled. She's very intense, like my mother taken to the extreme. And she has a perfectionist streak that is legendary. Being unable to have children and losing her husband has been a horrible blow to her image in addition to the grief of the broken dreams she's suffering. And because people like to gossip and assign blame, everyone is talking about what is wrong with her and she knows it. She knows most of the talk is about her and how Kenneth was a saint to put up with her as long as he did. But know that what most of people say about her is talk, and nothing more."

Zel considered Min. There was a lot of truth to what she was saying. He knew how hurtful and at times wrong gossip could be. Yet he could not ignore Min's immaculate hair and her face covered under a mask of makeup to hide any imperfection. Nor could he overlook that with a husband high in the ranks and herself in a position of prominence, it would be only natural to conclude that appearances were important to her. As would covering up any dirty little family secrets. In other words, her assurances were not as quieting as they ought to be.

But Zel smiled and bade her a pleasant goodbye before leaving her office. He waved to Morris as they passed each other in the foyer and shortly thereafter ran into Lina. "You will be coming to Min's for supper again?" she asked.

Zel assured her that he was, even as he started struggling to find a reason to decline and find his own inn. Whatever the situation with Dianna was, it was none of his business. Lina and Gourry had no obligation to open up about whatever tragedy had occurred, especially as they had not seen each other for decades. And the more time he spent hearing about Dianna and being with Dianna the more curious he became and the more compelled he was to find out for sure if it was brain damage or something else. Part of him felt that what would be for the best would be to associate with his former friends as little as possible, before he trampled on their boundaries and uncovered their secrets.

But his gut was screaming at him that this was a secret that needed to be uncovered. While the idea that Dianna was brain damaged seemed logically sound, his instincts were telling him that he was wrong. Further, that Dianna was a danger to others was not in dispute. The caution that her family took with their children around her was proof of that. But what if Dianna's potential to harm others affected more people than just her family, or her city even? If that was the case, could he really afford to let them be?

"Lina," he said, deciding to ask before he changed his mind, "Have you heard from Xellos lately?"

"Xellos?" Lina replied, seeming genuinely baffled, "Wow, that takes me back. Last time I saw him was right before I defeated Shabranigdu the second time. Why?"

Zel tried to shrug casually, feeling slightly embarrassed now, especially as he felt she was telling the truth, "Thought I saw someone who looked a bit like him earlier. I was probably just seeing things."

Lina groaned, "Oh that would be the last thing…"

"Mom!" Attie's cries rang through the foyer as she raced into the guild, completely indifferent to the attention she was amassing.

Lina turned, puzzled, "Attie?"

Attie reached her, and put her hands on her shoulders. "Mrs. Root died."

Lina's eyes widened, "What?"

"Patsy says she saw Dianna running into the woods."

"Shit!" Lina exclaimed as she went white, "Where's your father?"

"Already after her."

Lina looked at Zel, and then at her daughter, "Take Zel to Min's, and then get Sis."

And then she raced out of the guild. Alarms went off in Zel's mind, and even though rationally he knew it was none of his business and that he shouldn't care, his intuition was screaming at him that he would regret it if he didn't follow Lina and get to the bottom of the mystery. So he ran after Lina. Attie swore and followed him, keeping hot on his heels as they raced to the woods.


	3. Chapter 3

Zel managed to keep Lina in sight as the houses and buildings of Zefiel City thinned out. Behind him he could sense Attie riding his heels, but it wasn't until they got to the point where there were no people or houses that she sped up ahead of him. Zel quickened his place, desperate to keep up, but she was too fast! Suddenly she was ahead of him, and then before he could even process what was happening she had turned around a lobbed a spell at him.

He couldn't run anymore! He checked behind him and found that he had been caught in a shadow snap. He cursed, and then chanted a light spell as he turned to glare at her. "This is no concern of yours." Attie said firmly, a ball of energy in her hands and ready to use against him.

Zel was torn between feeling as though he was intruding into what was genuinely a mere personal matter and the feeling that the situation was far more dire. He sized up his options. Sure, Attie was a hell of a lot younger than him and lacked his battle experience, but then that never stopped her parents from defeating more wizened and powerful enemies. Further he was lucky to manage a Dil Brand these days. Attie, as a full-fledged member of the guild, at the least could manage a Fireball. He was vastly overpowered. And while his skills with the sword were still solid, drawing it on the merits of a gut feeling seemed drastic. But then, she was the one who had lobbed the first spell.

He watched as up ahead Lina veered off into the woods. He didn't have a lot of time to plan his next move, much less fight Attie. "Is killing me really worth keeping your secret?" he asked.

Attie raised an eyebrow. "I have no need to kill you."

He met her eyes, "Then if I move forward, you won't attack me?"

"I'd recommend turning around." She said casually, "I wouldn't want to get lost in those woods."

He raced forwards towards where he saw Lina go. Attie kept on his heels but made no other move against him. When he got into the woods and saw how dense they were he realized he had a problem, and he figured that Attie had let him go because she had believed she had bought Lina enough time to get so far ahead that there was no way he'd be able to follow her. He had to hand it to Attie, just like her father, she wasn't as dumb as she looked. The woods were so thick it was hard to see even a hand held in front of his face. Attie stayed close to him as she leaned against a tree and considered him. He wrote off any attempt to get any help from her as fruitless, so he listened, turning his head in the direction of the shuffling of foliage, and barely managed to see Lina up ahead.

He set off in the direction he saw her in, but slowed down to keep his footing. Tree branches clawed at his face and his foot caught on roots and vines. After he was cured he found he hated going into the woods. When he had his coarse, stone skin he didn't have to worry about spider bites or the sticky feeling of walking into a web, much less the disquieting feeling of tree branches and leaves brushing against and scratching his skin. It was so bad he actually found himself wishing he still had the cursed body when he walked in the woods. His flesh and blood human body just felt so vulnerable. But he persisted until he was so deep in that he realized he had lost track completely of Lina. Attie, on the other hand, was still beside him. "Need help finding your way out?" she asked.

Zel bit back a retort as he struggled for any sign of Lina, Gourry or Dianna. And then he wondered why he was even bothering. His suspicions were highly improbable after all. And what right did he really have to poke his nose around in other people's affairs?

 _Must be channeling some of Amelia's spirit,_ he told himself wryly, thinking of how she would covertly trail Lina and try to uncover what suspicious things she was up to. Gods, he missed her.

He took a deep breath. _I'm just projecting my ghosts onto my friends._ He told himself as he turned around. But damned if he was going to ask Attie how to get out.

Suddenly a bloodcurdling scream pierced through the woods. Zel was once again off in its direction, trailed by an equally determined Attie, who Zel was satisfied to see was losing her composure. Evidently she had believed he would have become so lost and disoriented in the woods that he'd be forced to retreat. His sense of elation over proving her wrong died as he got deeper into the woods and could smell the alarming stench of blood and guts and could hear the sounds of conversation.

"I'm just so tired of fighting him." He heard Dianna say, her voice shaky and uneven. "I don't want to do it anymore."

"I know it's hard." Gourry said, "We've all wanted to give up at times, but think of all there is to lose if you do."

"But I've lost everything!" she snapped, "I couldn't make a family, I lost Kenneth, and now I lost my perfect record, likely my career…"

"It was one person." Gourry interrupted, "Even the best midwives lose patients. Plenty of people will still want to be delivered by you. You know that. Life is hard that way. We don't even know if she died because of the birth. Something else could have…"

"I should have caught it!" Dianna yelled as Zel finally came upon the clearing they were in and felt his stomach turn.

Dianna was keeled over in the center of a bloodbath, the corpses of mutilated coyotes, squirrels, rabbits and deer circling her. Her hands were covered in a thick veneer of guts and gore. Still, Gourry knelt beside her, one hand on her back as he struggled to talk her down while Lina watched from the perimeter, and from her open hand stance Zel could see that she was ready and waiting to cast a spell should the need arise.

"Everyone dies, Dianna." Lina said carefully, "We're sorcerers, not miracle workers."

"What's the point then if everyone dies?" Dianna shot back. "Might as well get it over with!"

Gourry grabbed her shoulders, "Look at me!"

She did. "Who's talking?" he asked.

"Me." She growled as the air thickened and Zel could detect a halo of red encompassing her, "Dianna. I want what he wants!"

"And what would you miss about this world?" he asked.

"Not a damn thing!" she spat as the hue of the aura deepened.

"Go back to the list, Di." He said, "What's the first thing on the list?"

Her lip trembled, "The orange tint the sky takes in the morning when the sun rises. But I hate even that now. Mrs. Root will never see another sunrise."

"Do you hate it enough to never want to see it again?" he asked quietly.

She took a deep shuddering breath, but didn't answer him. "Answer me!" he demanded.

"I don't know." She said as the hue lessened in intensity.

"What's the next thing on the list?" Gourry asked.

"Pomona, Min, Attie. You two." She said.

"What will happen to us if you destroy this world?" he asked.

"You two won't let me even if I let him take over." She said quietly, "You'd never let me. Zel said it. You defeated him. You did it twice. I just don't want to fight this rage anymore, live with this fear over who I'm going to hurt! I'm tired of fighting him! I just want to sleep."

"Do you want that enough to make your mother live with your blood on her hands for the rest of her life?" Gourry asked.

The red hue evaporated as Dianna let out a sob. Zel looked at Lina. She was crying even as she held her arms ready, a look of intense anguish on her face. Zel felt anger tear through him. What sort of desperate gamble were they taking with the fate of the world?

"I'm sorry." Dianna said at last, but the red hue did not return, "I just don't want to fight him anymore."

"When was the last time you wanted to give up?" Gourry asked.

Her eyes went hazy, "When I miscarried after the fertility statue was found."

"What all would you have missed if you had given up then?"

She squeezed her eyes tightly as tears fell from them, "Even if I become happy again what's the point? It never lasts."

"Neither does the pain." He said. "Trust me. I know. I know what it's like to hurt so much you want to give up and die. If I had done that I never would have had Minny, Attie and Pomona. I never would have seen you grow up. And your mother would have cursed my name. Tell me, what would you have missed if you had given up then?"

Dianna took a deep breath, "Meeting Pomona, and Wally. Helping Hidira deliver her first healthy baby. All of the babies I helped deliver. That time at the waterfall with Kenneth."

She stopped as she wept silently. "There will be pain, but there will also be joy." Gourry said. "And if you give it up now you'll never get to experience it."

Dianna nodded and whispered, "I'll fight him."

Lina lowered her hands and joined Gourry on her other side to help her up. Lina was trembling so badly Zel was amazed she could walk. Zel looked at them in disbelief as his world seemed to spin. He hadn't been drawing unwarranted conclusions. His instincts had been correct. Dianna had a shard of Shabranigdu in her. And Lina and Gourry knew and were trying to hide it from him!

Gourry hugged Dianna, ignoring the blood that stained his clothes as he did. Lina stroked Dianna's hair. "Let's get you home and cleaned up." She said.

Lina turned and stared at Attie and Zel. Attie looked at Zel, "I'm sorry, I…"

Lina shook her head as she moved forward with Gourry and Dianna, "It was going to get out sooner or later. I'm surprised we kept it under wraps for this long."

Gourry kept an arm around Dianna, "I thought I sensed a sixth person."

"If there was, he's gone now." Lina said mutely, obviously emotionally drained.

The group walked in silence for a moment. Lina, Gourry and Dianna were exhausted, Attie was alert for the potential sixth person, and Zel was too furious to get his thoughts in any sort of coherent order. All he could think of was all that Rezo had done to him, all that Rezo had cost him, and that fury that Zel had thought he had let go of returned with a vengeance.

Eventually they reached Lina and Gourry's cottage, and Attie offered to take Dianna to help her bathe. As soon as their daughters were gone Lina collapsed onto the back porch steps and brought her head to her knees. Gourry sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her, a pensive expression on his face.

Zel snapped, "What the hell are you two doing?"

Lina lifted her face up but did not look at him as she bit her lip. Zel yelled, "She's corrupted by Shabranigdu! She's evil!"

"She's our daughter!" Gourry said firmly.

"And you're letting that sentiment blind you to what she really is, and what you need to do!" Zel roared.

"What would you do then?" Lina asked, a dangerous edge in her voice.

"She says she's tired of fighting." Zel said, "I'd give her the peace she seeks. The longer you let her live the more people she hurts, people like your other children, and grandchildren! And then it's just a matter of time before she decides to destroy the world!"

Lina's lips curled into a thin smile, "Thinking in the short term as always. Really, what would killing her accomplish? We'd lose our daughter, and Shabranigdu's soul would be reborn into another infant, gods knows who or where. And some other family would be destroyed, some other family who doesn't have the power we have to keep him in check."

Zel looked at her as though she was insane as Gourry said bitterly, "Luna said these things find us for a reason."

Lina snorted, "Ceiphied realized just how useful we were and even though we'd decided we were tired of being heroes, he had a few more tasks in store for us and managed to throw this in our paths. Lucky us."

Gourry put on hand on her knee while his other hand grabbed one of hers, and Zel wasn't sure if he was comforting her or drawing comfort from her and eventually decided it was a bit of both as he studied the look in his eyes. When the swordsman spoke, his voice was choked with fury and grief. "Really, you come in, not knowing anything of what we've been through for the last thirty years or so, nothing less of how we've come to conclude that this is what we need to do, and have the nerve to tell us we're doing it all wrong and what you would do in our place?"

"Seeing as how I was treated at the hands of another whose soul housed Shabranigdu, I think I have a right to judge!" Zel spat.

"Fine." Lina said harshly, "But hear us out first, and then if you're still so convinced that we're doing the wrong thing, we can duel it out."

Zel folded his arms across his chest and decided he owed them that much. Besides, it wasn't as if he had the power to take them on anymore. If they were wrong, his best option was to listen to their arguments so he could point out to them the folly of their way of thinking, "I'm listening."


	4. Lina & Gourry's Story

It was visibly obvious when Lina and Gourry returned from their honeymoon tour that their brief union had been fruitful. While people ribbed them about their upcoming loss of freedom and trading a life of adventure for changing diapers, Lina was glad to have a reason not to go back to it. She was still broken hearted after having to kill a friend and had had a life time of making difficult, world saving decisions. She was ready to hang up her hat and let someone else make the gut rending calls. And as always, Gourry was simply happy to do whatever she wanted.

Fortune seemed to smile on them. Hers parents' store was becoming extremely profitable and they needed some extra hands. Lina and Gourry moved in with them and hoped to be able to move into their own place by the time the baby arrived, though as the weeks passed it became obvious that it was not going to happen. They threw themselves into their new life, with all the optimism and dreams that a young couple in love could have.

The only thing that troubled Lina was how much pain she was in. And how it got worse as the child within her grew bigger and stronger. The baby would kick her so hard she would be winded. It seemed to take great delight in punching her lungs and winding her. It had a way of curling into a ball and then uncoiling harshly, so both legs and arms flew out in four separate directions at the same time! Lina was baffled by the women who would talk with delight about feeling the baby move. Lina felt hers was tearing her apart from the inside out!

Still, Lina kept quiet. She didn't want to seem weak or worry anyone, especially Gourry. And when it got unendurable she would cast a sleep spell on her stomach and the downstairs neighbor's antics would cease. Lina worried about the sheer amount of times it was necessary for her to use it, but when the baby started kicking hard enough to break her ribs, Lina felt that the sleep spells were the only way both of them were going to survive it.

One night, when she still had a month left to go, Lina was helping her mother put away the dinner dishes when she cried out, keeling over in pain as the dishes fell and shattered around her. "Lina?" her mother asked, aghast.

Lina gritted as she straightened as best she could as Mrs. Inverse supported her. The little bugger was awake and continued his pummeling even as Lina struggled to breath. She was pretty sure that first kick had broken a rib, and that the creature within was struggling to break a second! "What's wrong?" Gourry asked as he raced into the dining room.

"It's just indigestion." Lina gritted as her mother helped her to the couch.

"No it's not." Mrs. Inverse said, horrified, as she stared at Lina's stomach. The little creature was kicking and punching so hard it was plainly visible through Lina's shirt! "He looks like he's trying to claw his way out!"

Lina struggled to hold back tears as she cast a sleeping spell. The pummeling finally stopped, but she was still in a tremendous amount of pain thanks to the broken ribs. "I've got it under control." She said as her father entered the room with Luna. "I don't need all of you crowding me like a flock of hens."

"How long have you been doing that?" Gourry asked as Mrs. Inverse felt around her rib cage. Lina cried out again, and her mother started a recovery spell.

"Doing what?" Lina asked once she caught her breath.

"Casting sleep spells on it?"

"I dunno. A few months." Lina said reluctantly, feeling unusually weak and vulnerable. She wished that everyone would just leave the room until she got her composure back, "Don't worry about it, I've learned how to take care of it."

"How many times have you broken your ribs?" Mrs. Inverse asked sharply, and Lina wanted to kill her as she saw the look of guilt that flashed across Gourry's face.

"What does it…" Lina started, but had to stop. Yelling hurt too much. She leaned her head back on the couch and told herself that she was lucky to have kept it under wraps for this long.

"Have you talked to the midwife?" Luna asked.

"What's she going to do, other than tell me to suck it up?" Lina replied.

"It's not normal to keep breaking ribs like this." Mrs. Inverse insisted.

The words chilled Lina to the core. Not normal. Did that mean there was something wrong with the baby? "I'll take you tomorrow," her mother decided, "Get it checked out. Just in case."

"But…" Lina started.

"Please." Gourry said, quietly but firmly.

"Fine." Lina agreed.

And sure enough, when they went the next day all the midwife said was she just had a very active, strong baby and that there was nothing to worry about, and that no harm at all would come from the sleep spells if that was what she had to do to get through the torturous and seemingly endless last month of pregnancy.

* * *

"This sucks!" Lina exclaimed as sat up in bed and rested her head against the headboard as the last contraction died away.

Gourry patted her knee, "You're doing very well."

"Say that one more time and I'm going to knock your teeth down your throat!" she snapped.

From across the room Gourry noticed as Mrs. Inverse smiled knowingly. Earlier that morning Lina had been whining and begging for the pains to come so she wouldn't be pregnant anymore. She met the first contractions with an eager excitement and was fully ready for the challenge of labor. Several hours later, the thrill had worn thin and she was desperate for it to be over. But at least as her mother had pointed out she was progressing so quickly it didn't look as though it would be a long labor. So fast that while Gourry was ready for the baby to get here and the end of her pain, he was also desperate for it not to happen until the midwife got there. Once again he wondered where she was. Her father had left some time ago to fetch her!

"Damn!" Lina exclaimed.

"What?" Gourry asked.

"I think my water broke. Wow, this feels weird." She said.

"When is that midwife getting here?" Gourry asked as Lina's grip on his hand suddenly tightened and she let out as exclamation of pain as she curled into herself, sending a chill through Gourry's body.

Her mother walked up and put a hand on her knee, "Hush, it's almost over." She said calmly as Lina struggled to breathe through it, but quieted and relaxed in response to the touch. The door flew open and an elderly lady walked in.

"With a scream like that this looks like the real deal." The midwife observed as she bustled in and glared at Gourry, and he felt his stomach sink. Vera was the midwife that Lina had not wanted to attend her birth. Lina and Vera had butted heads from the moment they laid eyes on each other, and Lina had made it clear that under no circumstances did she want that old cow to deliver her while Vera had been equally adamant that the only way she'd attend an impetuous little wench like her was if no one else was available. It made sense now why her father was so late bringing her. The worst had happened and they had had to make due with Vera. "No men allowed."

Gourry looked helplessly at Lina as she finally exhaled with relief as the contraction released its grip on her. "I can't leave her to face this on her own."

"Her mother and sister are here, she'll be fine." Vera maintained.

"Vera," Mrs. Inverse said gently, "Can't this be an exception?"

"It's bad luck." Vera said.

"In Elmekia all men stayed with their wives." Gourry said.

"No wonder Elmekia is so backwards then." Vera snapped. "Now get!"

"I want him to stay." Lina said firmly, and Gourry felt better. He wasn't just making it worse for her!

Gourry squeezed her hand, "Then I'm not leaving you."

"You have five minutes and then you have to leave." Vera said as she started unpacking her bag.

"It's my house." Mrs. Inverse said, "I decide who stays. Now, shouldn't you be doing your job and tending to my daughter rather than picking the first fight you can?"

Vera glared at Mrs. Inverse, obviously furious. "How far apart are the contractions?"

"Three minutes." Mrs. Inverse said coolly, "And her waters have broken."

"Good."

Lina shook her head as Vera approached the bed, "Damn, he woke up."

Gourry glanced at Lina's stomach and saw the rippling movements and shook his head in disbelief over how strong and fierce the life within was as Lina closed her eyes. "This close you'd probably better not use another sleep spell." Mrs. Inverse said as Lina nodded in agreement.

"At least he's dropped too low to hit my rib cage. Oh shit, here it comes!"

She started out yelling like she had during the last one, and Gourry touched her leg like he had seen her mother do. For a brief moment she closed her eyes as she focused and quieted, but then her eyes shot open as she clutched his arm tightly and she started to scream in agony, the sound so chilling that Gourry felt his skin erupt in gooseflesh as something about the way Lina was responding to what was happening to her changed.

Vera clucked as she examined Lina, "Such a weakling. Most women don't start screaming like that till they're farther along. You've still got a way to go."

Gourry wanted to deck her, and from the look on Mrs. Inverse's face he was not alone. Beads of sweat formed on Lina's face as she struggled with the pain, and when she finally relaxed she was close to tears, "Something's wrong!"

"What is it?" Gourry asked as the anxiety grew within him.

"There's a man in the delivery room, that's what's wrong!" Vera snapped, "Serves you right for going against my advice."

"Put a lid on the superstitious nonsense!" Mrs. Inverse said curtly, and Gourry could tell by the look on her face that he was not the only one who was scared by Lina's change in composure, "Lina's a highly trained sorceress and her intuition is well developed. If she says something is wrong then you'd better look into it."

"Nerves of the first time mother." Vera maintained as she finished examining Lina, "Head is engaged, you're a bit farther along than you think you are, and everything looks fine."

Lina shook her head as tears started to run down her face and her voice shook, "Something is wrong."

"It's supposed to hurt a lot, you'll get over it." Vera maintained.

Gourry wanted to tell her that he had seen Lina tortured by a Mazoku who fully intended to kill her after wresting as much pain and agony from her as possible, and that he had never seen her break down like this. But he found he couldn't speak. He was used to facing down his fears on the battlefield, but this was an arena he had never fought in before and he was at a loss as to what to do.

Lina's mother put a hand on her shoulder, "What is it?" she asked.

"I don't know how to describe…No!" Lina yelled before she threw her head back and screamed again. Gourry was shaking as he looked at Mrs. Inverse, who looked to be feeling just as helpless as he was. For one brief moment Lina stopped screaming as she struggled to catch her breath, contorted wildly, wrenching her hand from his as she threw her arms in the air as if to ward off an invisible attack before she started screaming again, louder even than before. Gourry silently pleaded with someone, anyone to make it stop. He put a hand on her knee but she didn't even notice.

Mrs. Inverse stepped back, looking torn between terror and grief, "I'm telling my husband to get another midwife."

She left, and Lina finally relaxed as Vera looked at her watch, "That was barely two minutes apart from the last one. That is impressive considering this is your first child."

Lina lay on back on the headboard, her eyes closed and looking exhausted as she struggled to breathe. He looked at her stomach and he could see the baby kicking from within and could tell from the way she bit her lip that even though she was no longer screaming she was still in pain. He grabbed her hand and tried to think of something to say. He had just opened his mouth when her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him. "I'm sorry." She whispered.

And then her eyes rolled into her head and she fell limp onto the bed. Gourry was so busy trying to get her to wake up that he didn't even hear the midwife yelling at him to step away, had not even noticed the fact that she was bleeding out until Mrs. Inverse had returned and pulled him away from the bed. At first he couldn't understand why the sheets had turned red. But then the horrible truth slowly sunk in. And all he could do was watch, unable even to reach out and offer a word of comfort to Lina's mother who was breaking down as they hoped that somehow this midwife that they had come to despise would rescue Lina and her child.

* * *

All he wanted was to be wherever she was.

The days that followed passed by in a haze of pain and yearning for the end of life. Gourry was no stranger to the thrall of depression, but never before had it been so bad that he wanted to die. Now, it was all he desired. He only had to wait for Lina's body to finally follow the path her mind had gone. Every morning when he woke to find her eyes open but staring lifelessly at the ceiling he thought that certainly today would be the day. But every evening ended with her barely clinging somehow to the last vestiges of life.

While none of them were sure when her body would follow, everyone was convinced that her mind was gone. She lay on the bed, unresponsive even to the cries of her daughter and comatose. No spark of life flashed in her eyes, no sign of the brilliance she once had fluttered within. Lina was gone.

Gourry never left the room. Not even to care for his daughter. He couldn't bear to look at her. It was as his brother had said. Gabriev men destroy the women they love. He'd loved Lina deeply, gotten her pregnant by demonstrating that love, and her mind had been destroyed. If he tried to raise his daughter he would mess it up. He would get mad and beat her like his father had beaten him. He would destroy her just as he had destroyed Lina. She'd be better off with her grandparents. The only thing left to do was to wait for Lina's body to follow her mind, and then he could follow her.

Not that her family was letting him go without a fight. First in an attempt to get him to leave the room they stopped sending in food, but to their alarm they realized that it gave him an excuse to starve himself. Then her mother and father both came in with the baby to demand that he care for her. "She won't stop crying, you know. She's wanting you!" "You know if Lina were aware of what you are doing she would kick your ass, right?" "Switch places, what would you want her to do?" "You know it was that damned midwife and not you, right?"

But he didn't respond to them or their demands. He ignored them and stared at Lina, whose eyes were empty, and wondered when he could be with her again.

One day Luna sent her parents out of the house and put the baby in the room with him and told him that there was no one to care for her but him before walking out of the room. And though the baby wailed, and though Gourry himself cried the whole time, he could not motivate himself to pick her up. Part of him kept hoping that somehow Lina would be miraculously pulled back into her body by the sounds of the infant's cries. But she didn't so much as twitch.

Luna's desperate attempt to draw him back into the world ended when her parents came home and scolded them both for letting her cry for so long. Luna let it wash off her back. Gourry was too distraught to care.

The next day he roused himself when he noticed that Lina's breathing had changed. It was getting more shallow and precarious. Finally. It was almost over. He got up and walked to the bureau where he kept his sword, resolved to go not a moment after she did. The only problem was that his sword wasn't there.

Rage tore through him as he stormed out of the room and downstairs into the kitchen, nearly knocking Lina's parents over, "My sword!" he bellowed as soon as he saw Luna sitting at the dining room table with two guests, "Where's my sword?"

Mrs. Inverse looked faint as she clutched her heart. "Is she gone?" she asked, and then she ran up the stairs, followed by her husband and another man.

"I want my sword!" he yelled as he stood before Luna, towering over her.

She stood up, and even though she did not have his massive height she more than held her own, "I'll give you your sword when you start acting like a man again."

He turned towards her room, ready to tear it apart until he found it when someone got in front of him and slapped him across the face, stunning him. The physical pain was sobering, and he brought his hand to his cheek as he looked down, "Adena?" he said.

His sister was livid. Her blue eyes cackled with rage. And she was holding his daughter. "Do you have any idea what it does to someone to know that their parents rejected them?" she shouted accusingly.

"I didn't…" he started weakly as guilt and shame started to course through him. "She'll be better off without me."

"No child is better off living under the shadow of knowing that their father ran a sword through himself to avoid trying to raise her." Adena shot back as tears fell from her eyes, "You owe her your best attempt to raise her."

He felt the tears well within him as Adena cut through the fugue he had been in. With horror he recoiled at the way he had been thinking for the last few weeks, "I'm so sorry."

"I'm not the one you need to apologize to!" Adena shouted as she forced the baby into his arms. "You will acknowledge her!"

He felt so weak and shaky that he was terrified he would drop her, but somehow he didn't. Adena guided him to a chair as he started to sob as he finally looked at his daughter. She was so small and beautiful and perfect. How could he have neglected her for so long? Hadn't he wanted to be a good father?

"I'm sorry." He said again, "I'm so sorry. I'm going to make it up to you."

Adena wrapped an arm around him and leaned her head on his shoulder. He felt terrible, but at least he was feeling something other than grief and a desire for annihilation. "What are you going to call her?" Luna asked, "These past few weeks we've been referring to her as 'the baby.'"

Gourry stared at the baby. Considering how rambunctious she'd been in the womb they had all concluded she was going to be a boy. He stroked her soft blonde hair, reflecting on how, even at this young age, she looked so much like him that there was no trace of the woman he loved within her. Though if she was as feisty as everyone said she was he wondered if Lina would manifest in her personality. Still, he wanted to do something to memorialize Lina. He was about to answer Luna when from upstairs Mrs. Inverse shouted, "Wait!"

But footsteps rang from above and down the stairs, and Lina suddenly appeared at the foot of the steps, looking as though she would topple over, but standing nonetheless as she grasped the wall for support. "My baby?" she asked.

Gourry felt as though he was seeing a ghost. "She's here." He said faintly as he stood up, scarcely believing his eyes even as he walked towards her, hoping that this was not some cruel trick.

Lina started to walked over to him as her parents followed her down the stairs. "I thought she hadn't made it, I thought I was losing her." She said as she reached him and took the baby from him, her face wet with tears.

For a brief moment Gourry was torn between contentment to finally see her hold the child he feared she would never be able to hold and crushing her into his own embrace. But the image could have been a fleeting illusion. He had to know she was real. He pulled her to him as closely as he dared without crushing the baby, his tears falling onto her hair as he relished in the life that flowed through her body. Somehow she was back and alive and solid and real! "I thought I'd lost you! How?" he asked.

"Let's get her to the couch." Her mother said firmly, and Gourry guided her over to the sofa and sat down beside her, not even daring to let her go for fear of finding he was dreaming. She was trembling from the effort of having gotten down the stairs and was obviously still weak. But then, she'd not had a proper meal for nearly a month.

It was then that Gourry noticed that Nes, his great-grandfather and golden dragon, had come down with her parents. "I didn't want to say anything to give you any false hope in case she was too far gone even for my skills." He explained, "Fortunately that was not the case. I must say, you married a fighter."

Gourry smiled as he ran a hand through Lina's hair, "I did."

Lina could not take her eyes off her baby, "How long was I out?"

"Four weeks." Luna said.

Lina's eyes widened, "Weeks?" she repeated.

Luna came up with a bowl of soup and some water, "You must be famished." She said as she set it on the table.

"I've missed so much." Lina said as she stroked the baby's head.

"Be glad you're able to be with her, period." Gourry said, "We'd given up hope for you."

"Really, all she's been doing is eating, sleeping, crying and pooping. You haven't missed much." Luna said. "And are you two going to get around to giving her a proper name?"

"Dianna." Lina said without skipping a beat. Gourry had no idea where she had pulled the name from, but he was so relieved that she was okay that she could have named her after Phibrizo and he wouldn't have objected. She then looked down at her breasts, "I've dried up, haven't I?"

"Trust me." Her mother said, "You're not missing much. It gets old fast."

Gourry studied Lina and could tell from her expression that she felt she had been robbed of something precious. He felt torn between wanting to shake her and tell her to be glad for what she had and shame over how he had so willingly forfeited those first four weeks. Then Lina leaned back on the couch. "You okay?" he asked.

"So dizzy." She said.

He took Dianna from her as Luna came around and shoved the bowl at her again, "You've not had a proper meal for weeks, eat, before I shove the bowl down your throat!"

He kept waiting for someone to tell Lina about the shameful way he'd been since Dianna was born, but everyone seemed too caught up in their relief that Lina would be okay and that he had snapped out of his depression to say anything. After Lina had eaten he carried her back to their bed. From downstairs they could hear Dianna crying. "Dammit, I should be the one caring for her!" she said, "I feel like such an invalid!"

He brushed a hand through her hair, relishing in the first time alone with her recovered, "You'll get stronger, and she'll still need a lot of looking after."

Dianna did not stop crying. After some thought Lina looked at him and smiled, "She's her father's daughter. She looks just like you. I bet you've been two peas in a pod."

At the look on his face Lina frowned, "What is it?"

"I've been in such a bad place, I've not been caring for her." He admitted, and at the look on Lina's face he chickened out, "I was caring for you, I mean, I couldn't leave your side, not while you were still alive. I couldn't take care of both of you, and I knew your folks would take good care of her, so I've let them shoulder the brunt of it."

He felt gutted under the look on her face. He grabbed her hands, "I hate the way I've been these last few weeks. But I'm going to turn it around now, and be the best father I know how to be."

"You'd better." She said, "Or I'll have to throttle you."

He leaned forward to kiss her, relief washing through him as she returned it. He stroked her face when he pulled away, "Rest now, I'm going to take care of our daughter, and I'll bring her up so you can see her in a few hours."

She smiled at him as she leaned back onto the pillows. Gourry took another look at her, alive and sleeping on the pillows, and then closed the door. Dianna was still shrieking from downstairs, and he had a lot of making up to do. When he got downstairs he was shocked to see his father holding Dianna. Between his grief and then relief over Lina, he hadn't even fully realized he was here!

"I think we'll let you have a try." Petry said as he handed Dianna to Gourry.

Dimly Gourry remembered agreeing to see his father again. Since learning about how he had reformed Gourry had given thought to seeing him again, but had put it off for fear of somehow being disappointed. But when Lina got pregnant he figured that the time had come to mend them, and finally agreed to his requests to come down to visit with Nes and Adena.

Gourry hoisted Dianna on his shoulder and started singing a lullaby he would sing to her when she was in Lina's stomach. The effect was instantaneous as she quieted down. "Looks like all she needed was her father." Mrs. Inverse said pointedly.

Gourry flailed for something stupid to say, but he was still too ashamed of his actions as Luna said, "She's been a right terror. I think she missed the both of you and has been taking out her rage with us. Never knew that babies could turn purple with rage."

Gourry decided that her folks had every right to be mad, "I think I'll go and take her for a walk."

"I'll come with you." Petry said.

When they got outside Petry put a hand on his shoulder, "Think of it this way, you got your big screw up out of the way with, and she's so young she won't even remember it."

Gourry smiled a bit as Petry pulled him into a sideways embrace, "And at least it only took you a matter of weeks to come to your senses. It took me years!"

"It's no excuse," Gourry said, even if he did feel better.

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to make it up to her." Petry said.

Gourry nodded in agreement as he made a commitment to do everything in his power to be the father Dianna needed from here on out, regardless of what happened to Lina.

Gradually Lina recovered, but it was still several months before she was up to her full strength. By then Dianna had teeth, and while Lina had been highly resentful of the fact that she hadn't been able to breastfeed her, when Dianna started biting she voiced relief that her poor nipples were saved as she shook her head in chagrin over her feisty daughter who would scream, kick, and holler with rage at the slightest of provocations. And people had said Lina had had a temper!

On some level Dianna's outbursts worried Gourry. While Lina's family joked about Dianna being Lina's karmic retribution, Gourry could not avoid thinking about the abusive rage that ran through his family. His father and several of his brothers had it. What if that rage has skipped him and manifested in his daughter? Lina told him he was being stupid and that once she learned to talk and could tell them what the hell it was that she wanted the rage would stop. What Lina was saying made sense, and Lina was a lot smarter than him, so he did his best to quiet his fears and believe her.

Besides, soon Gourry had something else to worry about entirely. It was a little over a year after Dianna was born and Lina and Gourry had finally moved into their own place that the thing Gourry had feared since Lina had recovered took place. Lina wanted another baby.


	5. Lina & Gourry's Story, Part II

"No way." He said firmly as he laid flat on his back in their bed. He was surprised at how angry he was at her for even asking about a second baby even though he had feared she had wanted one.

"Oh, come on, Gourry! I know you want a big family!" she said as she put a hand on his arm.

He shook his head as he stared at the ceiling, "Not if it means killing you in the process."

"What happened with Dianna was a fluke!" Lina persisted, "Besides, I'd know what to do better this time."

Gourry raised an eyebrow as he looked at her, "From how I see it, pregnancy isn't something you do, it's something that happens to you, and I'm not putting you through it again."

Lina flushed, and once again Gourry had the feeling that it was a blow to her pride that she had such a hard time carrying and birthing a child when women weaker than her had gone through the process so easily. He did his best to quell his anger as he stroked her hair, "Come on, we have Dianna, we have each other. It's enough."

"No, it isn't."

"Dammit, Lina, is it really worth putting your life in the fire again to prove your womanhood?" he snapped.

"I never let the fact that something was dangerous keep me from what I want!" Lina shot back, "But are you just too chicken because this time if something went wrong falling on your sword wouldn't be an option?"

Red flashed before his eyes. Leave it to Lina to grab you by your emotional eye sockets as she kicked you below the belt. Never before had the urge to grab her and shake her been so strong. Drawing her ire by leaving was definitely the lesser of two evils. He got up and dressed in a fluid motion as he stormed out of the bedroom. "Where are you going?" she screeched as she got up and started following him out of the bedroom.

"Out." He said as he fled from the house.

"No you don't, don't you dare walk out on me now!" she yelled as he got to the door and followed him onto the porch.

But then she was stuck. Dianna was asleep in the house and Lina had enough presence of mind to not leave her. Gourry walked, not paying too much attention to where he was going, leaving Lina screaming at him on the porch, not particularly caring that the neighbors could hear. He made his way into town and found that the pub was still open and went in for a drink. He instantly regretted the choice. Several of the men there made comments about how he must have finally been fed up being henpecked and with family life. He finished his drink quickly and left. He knew he should go home, but he couldn't bring himself to face Lina yet. So he continued to walk.

When dawn approached he figured there was no use going home and headed straight to work. Lina's parents were surprised to see him so disheveled and wearing the wrinkled clothes he was the previous day, but at the look on his face neither of them asked questions.

His work was efficient but without his usual friendliness that attracted customers. Lina's mother finally told him to get home and patch up whatever it was that had happened between him and her daughter. Nerves gripped him as he stopped by the florist and purchased a bouquet before making his way to the cottage.

From a distance he spotted Dianna on the porch with the cat, a golden tabby named Treasure. The front door was open and Lina was likely keeping tabs on her from the kitchen. From a distance Gourry heard Treasure hiss and spit as Dianna giggled and laughed, yelling, "Bad kitty!"

Gourry sped up as he heard Lina yelling from inside, "You leave that cat alone, NOW!"

But Dianna just laughed, and Gourry's stomach twisted as he saw her biting Treasure's ear as she squeezed him tightly. Treasure squirmed, trying to escape from her grip as he yowled in pain. "Dianna, no!" he said as he got to her and set the bouquet down and rescued the cat, noting with a wince that the top part of Treasure's ear was gone, "How do you think Treasure feels when you do this?"

Lina came to the door, beads of sweat on her face and wiping her hands on her apron as Dianna smiled and said gleefully, "Hurt!"

Gourry met Lina's eye, and could see that she was just as disturbed as he was. It was extremely disquieting to see his daughter, with her pale blond hair and cherubic cheeks, smile so delightedly as she talked about hurting an animal. "That's right, it hurts the kitty. That's why we don't do that, ok?"

"OK." She giggled, and he picked her up while Lina glared daggers at him.

"You really think that sweet talk is going to work?" she asked, and then wasted no time in laying onto him, "Honestly a few swift swats on the butt…"

"I don't want my children raised around that." He interrupted as he sat Dianna on the floor with her toys, "She doesn't know what she's doing, she'll grow out of it."

"She's been torturing Treasure all morning! Every time I turn my back she's on him!" Lina protested, "I was putting the roast in the oven and couldn't stop her when you came up."

"She's still a baby herself." Gourry maintained as Lina folded her arms across her torso and glared at him.

It was something they fought about from time to time. Gourry was adamant that he not repeat the cycle of fear of violence he'd suffered with his parents. Lina felt that sometimes a little violence was justified, but had reluctantly agreed to try things his way. "You'll ruin her the way you're spoiling her."

"A little spoiling never hurt." He said as he handed her the flowers.

She was not so easily won over, "I'm still mad at you."

"You really want another baby so bad?" he asked as Dianna started banging her blocks on the floor.

"Yes!" Lina insisted, even though to his eye she looked overwhelmed merely dealing with Dianna. This urge to reproduce was strong and insane. Especially considering they had already been through it once and knew exactly how ugly and difficult it could get. Why did people feel compelled to do it again and again?

He took a deep breath, "Can we invite Nes, have him stay close by just in case anything goes wrong again?"

Lina relaxed as she shook her head slightly, "If it will make you feel more comfortable, that's fine. But I think it's going to be all right this time."

"MAMA!" Dianna yelled.

Lina gritted her teeth, obviously at her wits end from having to care for her all day. "Just a minute!"

Gourry bit his lip, wondering if Lina really was up for the challenge of dealing with two. But then nine months was a long time, and Dianna would be older and more mature. And Gourry leaving in a storm the previous night had obviously left Lina in a more fragile mood than she usually was. But that was why he felt like he had to agree to this. It hadn't been the first time Lina had decided on some dangerous course of action. Since he'd known her he'd watched as she put her life on the line again and again. For someone who loved living as much as she did she was unbelievably reckless.

But it was part of her charm. Living on the edge made her happy, and he wanted her to be happy. Even if it meant risking a broken heart day in and day out. Gourry patted Lina on the arm and then pulled her to him, scared out of his mind by what he was agreeing to. "Then we can have another one."

He felt Lina bring her arms around him to return the embrace. "Thank you." She whispered.

"MAMA!" Dianna howled right before she threw the block with remarkable force at them.

* * *

Lina got pregnant again more slowly than she would have liked and quicker than Gourry had hoped. Once the morning sickness had abated and her stomach started to swell Lina found that this time around she was actually enjoying pregnancy. While Dianna had been fierce in the womb, this one was gentle, the movements in her stomach a pleasant fluttering rather than a tumultuous pounding. Even as the child grew the pain didn't, and she survived the pregnancy with no broken ribs. Lina would point this out to Gourry, who was incredibly anxious, as signs that this time everything was going smoothly. It did little to soothe his apprehension over the upcoming birth.

But when the dreaded day arrived, everything went remarkably well. Her labor was as swift and easy as it could get. Lina's pregnancy and birth with Minerva was completely antithetical to what it had been with Dianna. Nes's services were thankfully not needed.

Euphoria ran through Gourry as he sat in bed beside Lina and watched as she nursed Minerva, looking both exhausted but radiant. They'd spent the day eschewing visitors. They wanted to enjoy their newborn this time without having to share her and drink in the fact that this time around they got to experience those early, precious moments with her. But as it was getting late they knew that they wouldn't be able to keep the crowds away much longer. They'd already received notice from Lina's mother than she was going to be bringing Dianna over for one thing.

Sure enough the door opened, and Lina and Gourry looked up and smiled. "Hey, big girl!" Gourry said as Lina's mother walked in with Dianna, "Ready to meet your little sister?"

But Dianna stood frozen beside her grandmother as she stared in shock at the sight of her mother holding another baby. "Come now, don't be shy." Mrs. Inverse scolded as she walked to the bed, dragging Dianna behind her, "Goodness, she looks just like Di when she was born."

Dianna pouted as she drew near the bed and Lina leaned over with the baby to show her, "This is Minerva, but we're calling her Minny."

Dianna's eyes narrowed, but she moved her head close to Minerva's. Lina assumed that she was going to plant a kiss on her forehead she said, "Aw, what a sweet…"

Lina's voice trailed off as instead of putting her lips to Minerva's forehead, Dianna brought her head to the baby's neck. For a second Lina could not comprehend what was happening, or why blood was dripping down Minny's neck or why she was shrieking in such agony.

"Stop!" Mrs. Inverse said as she pulled Dianna back. Blood dripped from her mouth as her eyes flashed. Slowly Lina pieced together that Dianna had bitten Minny's throat! But before she could react Dianna shrieked and grabbed the sheets and attempted to tear them from the bed and then ran to the drawers and managed to wrestle it out and was posed to throw it.

Mrs. Inverse grabbed Minerva and started a healing spell as Gourry grabbed Dianna. She screamed and attempted to bite him. Lina watched, unusually transfixed with fear. At the worse she was expecting Dianna to cry. She wasn't expecting this! Surely this wasn't normal. What sort of two year old bites the throat of a baby she had just met? Lina started to tremble as she watched as Gourry subdued and attempted to calm Dianna down, wondering if they were just terrible parents or if something was horribly wrong with Dianna.

* * *

Lina thought that the rivalry between her and Luna had been epic. Certainly no older sister could put a younger one through anything worse than what Luna had put her through. But Dianna was proving her wrong. Even Mrs. Inverse shook her head, at a loss as to what to make of Dianna's behavior.

There were times Dianna could be so sweet. She would cuddle with Minny and tell her she loved her. One time when Lina had put Minny in her crib for a nap and turned to leave she was surprised to find Dianna remaining behind, putting her doll in the crib with her. Dianna also loved to make Minny laugh and would make funny faces to induce it's delightful sound.

But then there were the times when Dianna would get mad, usually when Minny had a toy she wanted or Lina or Gourry's attention. And when Dianna got mad her rage was ugly.

Lina lay on the couch and closed her eyes, relishing in the silence as she ruminated over Dianna. Minerva was down for a nap. And Janine Bins had invited Dianna over to play with her daughter, Maggie. As Dianna refused to nap, it wasn't often that Lina had a break from both girls. And while there were still dishes in the sink and food on the floor that had been tossed during lunch, as well as toys that needed to be put away, Lina just could not bring herself to clean. She was so exhausted.

Lina bit her lip. She had thought that Dianna's rage would quell as she grew older and could talk more, but it hadn't. At the age of four she had an impressive vocabulary. Too impressive. And if anything it got worse as she grew older and stronger. And the language she would use! Lina was quite sure she had never let those expletives slip around her, nor had anyone else Dianna spent time with.

Lina thought of the time that Minny took the toy that Dianna was eying and flung her across the room, screaming about how she was going to rip her from limb to limb as she chased after her and grabbed Minny by the hair to slap her. Lina was so busy keeping them apart during the day that she barely had time for anything else. The housework was neglected. What little time she managed to carve out for reading was gone. Her days were spent protecting Minny from Dianna, and Lina was getting to her wit's end. The fact that she hadn't been feeling well lately didn't help.

Lina rolled over on the couch. Gourry was scared the rage was from his family, a theory Lina felt didn't hold any water. Even he admitted that none of his brothers would have done that at such a young age. Besides, there was something familiar about the rage, something she didn't dare voice out loud, not even to check with Gourry to see if he had noticed it. The implications were simply too horrendous to contemplate, but reminded her of someone she used to know who would explode when angry. Lina shook her head, stopping the flow of that thought. There was no way that would happen to their daughter!

Someone knocked on the door. Lina groaned as she got off the couch, fighting back the queasiness as she went to the front door. It was Janine, looking livid. Beside her was Dianna. There was blood on her hands. "Janine?" Lina asked. "What's wrong?"

"Don't ever expect me to watch her again!" she said, and Lina felt her stomach drop. They'd thought Dianna's rage only affected her sister.

"What happened?" Lina asked.

"Your daughter decided she liked Maggie's porcelain doll, so she tried to steal it by hiding it under her pinafore. When Maggie found it and asked for it back Dianna hit her with it and it shattered!" Lina's mouth fell open and she covered it with her hand as Janine continued, "And then she grabbed one of the fragments and started screaming obscenities at Maggie about how she was going to kill her! She slashed her throat! It was lucky I got there when I did!"

Lina felt her mouth go dry as she resisted the urge to grind her molars. When she found her voice it was strangled, "Do I need to see Maggie? I can do a healing spell?"

"Her sister has taken her to the healer's! Your wretched daughter is out of control and you need to keep a firmer hand with her! Keep her away from our family from now on."

Lina's face flushed as she grabbed Dianna and yanked her into the house, "And you'd do well to keep a better eye on the children under your care." Lina snapped as she shut the door.

She kept her hand tight around Dianna's as she stormed into her bedroom. "Are you very mad, Mommy?"

"Oh, we are beyond mad!" Lina said as the blood pounded in her head. While she'd promised Gourry she'd never do it, his way wasn't working. She was an idiot to let it go on as long as it had. Dianna was out of control. She had been for a long time. This was long overdue.

She grabbed her hair brush and knelt down to look Dianna in the eye, "It's not okay to steal and hit people or cut their throats!" she yelled, horrified that she would even have to include that last bit about cutting throats with a four year old, "You brought this on yourself."

Lina sat on the bed and pulled Dianna over her knee and brought the brush down on her butt. Dianna gasped. Lina brought it down again. "Stop!" she screamed as she tried to squirm out of Lina's grasp. Lina brought it down again. Then Lina cried out in pain as Dianna leaned her head forward and bit her leg.

"Stop you little brat!" Lina screamed as she hit her a few more times, but Dianna bit down harder and harder until Lina felt her flesh rend. A wave of nausea rose through Lina, and she realized she was going to be sick. She pushed Dianna off of her and grabbed the chamber pot and threw up as Dianna ran from the room. Lina was too busy voiding her stomach to stop her and her leg throbbed agonizingly as Dianna threw a door down the hallway open.

Next thing Lina knew there was a loud crashing sound, followed by the sound of Minny screaming. "Dianna!" Lina yelled as she got up on shaky legs. Lina could feel the blood coursing down her leg from where Dianna had bitten her. Lina heard a slapping sound, followed by Minny screaming even louder as Dianna yelled, "I told that bitch to stop! Told her too! I hate that bitch!"

Lina got to the babies' room and found that Dianna had knocked Minny's crib over and was hitting her with the toy stick horse. "Get away from her!" Lina screamed, frustrated beyond belief that she was being walloped by a mere four year old.

Dianna turned and charged at her with the stick horse. Lina wondered if it would really be so bad to hit her with a good Dil Brand, but she managed to grab the horse and wrest it from her as she reached Minerva and picked her up. Minerva wailed, and to Lina's horror she saw bruises starting to form on her skin. But before Lina could tend to her Lina's instincts told her to duck. She did, shielding Minerva's body with hers as Dianna threw a big, heavy book of nursery rhymes at her, contacting her shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. Lina felt tears well in her eyes as she wondered why this was happening. Surely she and Gourry weren't such horrible parents to have raised a child to act this way! Min was so much gentler, even despite Dianna's harsh treatment for one thing.

Either way, Lina couldn't let this continue, "Sleeping!"

Dianna crumpled to the floor. Minny continued to shriek. Lina collapsed, her legs shaky, onto Dianna's bed and gave Minny a kiss on the forehead before she chanted a Recovery spell. Lina felt sick. The baby had bruises over most of her body and it looked as though she had broken her arm during the fall. Minny calmed down as her wounds healed but remained taunt and nervous as she curled up to her mother. Lina considered Dianna, calculating mournfully that by the time she woke up it would be time for her to go to bed.

 _Screw it_ , Lina thought, _I'll just cast another sleep spell._

She took a deep breath and walked over Dianna, Minny grabbing her tightly in fear as she approached. She started to cry. That Minny was so scared of Dianna that even approaching her sleeping form was causing this much distress was a blow to Lina. She changed course and took Minny to the kitchen instead and gave her a snack. Lina then returned to the baby's room, picked Dianna up and scanned her for injuries and put her on her bed, trying to us every ounce of rationality she possessed to combat the dangerous path her thoughts were taking. When Lina finally pulled off her pants to check out her own wound, she was not too surprised to find that Dianna had indeed bitten hard enough to tear through the cloth and taken a chunk of flesh from her thigh. Morosely Lina wondered what the world would say when it learned that Lina Inverse, slayer of Demon Lords, had had her ass handed to her by a four-year old.

Once Lina went back out into the kitchen she found Minny sitting in her high chair, quaking with fear.

* * *

Lina knew that there would be a lot of explaining to do when Gourry got home. What she wasn't expecting was for him to have Nes with him. Fortunately his great-grandfather noticed Lina's troubled countenance and made an excuse to give them some time with a promise he'd be back later. Lina filed the information as useful as she sat down with Gourry while he held Minny and Dianna slept.

Gourry said nothing as she related the day's events, but his eyes narrowed in disapproval. Lina knew he was pissed. When she finished he said, "Well, what do you expect? Someone hits you, you tend to hit back."

"She didn't hit back, she bit off a chunk of my thigh, turned Minny's crib over and beat her with a stick! Minny's still traumatized by it!" Lina insisted, "And what would you have done? She cut a kid's throat! We're lucky she didn't murder Maggie! What four year old does that! Either we're not very good parents or something is very wrong with her!"

He looked away from her, feeling queasy. She had a point that Dianna's behavior was not normal. "What do you think it is?" he asked.

Lina shook her head. She could not bring herself to say it out loud. Not without proof. She stared at the table dejectedly, "I don't know what to do anymore. Especially with Minny bearing the brunt of this. I've had it, I'm at my wit's end!"

"Looks like it if you had to go and hit her." Gourry said.

Red splashed before Lina's eyes. "You try spending your days keeping Dianna from killing her or someone else!"

"Fine, you go in to work at the store tomorrow, I'll stay home with them all day."

Lina felt her blood turn cold. "You think that's going to magically make it all better?" she asked. "That this is my fault?"

He sighed, "No, I don't. But may be having someone approach it differently…"

"Shut up!" She screamed, "You think this is my fault, you think if I was a better mother…"

"Lina…"

"Shut up!"" she yelled again as she ran out onto the porch, her eyes burning.

Fortunately Nes walked up shortly after she had run out. Lina desperately hoped Gourry wouldn't come out to greet him, but he seemed too preoccupied with Minny. "Nes." Lina said as she walked off the steps to greet him, "Take a walk with me."

"What it this about?" he asked, even as he joined step beside her as she headed towards the outskirts of town.

"Family business. I'll tell you more when you need to know it."

They walked quietly until they were finally free of the town and the watching eyes of people. Finally Lina turned to him and stated, "I'm going to Dragon's Peak. You can either transform and take me there tonight so I can get back home tomorrow, or I'll start walking and get back home in a few weeks, but either way I'm going."

"What?" he asked, stunned.

"You heard me."

"Why?"

She folded her arms across her chest, "I need to call in a favor with Milgasea."

He looked at her incredulously, "But I don't understand…"

"I don't have time for a bunch of questions." She snapped, "I need to know now if you're going to help me."

He stared at her, and Lina hoped he would say yes. She had no supplies with her, no food or money. She was in her civilian clothing with none of the accoutrements that provided protection. Despite her brash words she was not prepared to travel. And while she would if necessary return to the cottage to collect what she needed, doing so would mean having another fight with Gourry, which she was keen to avoid.

Finally Nes transformed. Lina sighed in relief as she then set her mind to tackling the next problem: how to get on his back and get a proper hold so she wouldn't fall off. Thank goodness for the levitation spell!

They got to Dragon's Peek swiftly, and were greeted by a young dragon who was confused as to why Nes would bring a human there. "Get Milgasea, tell him Lina Inverse has dropped by." She said as she got on firm ground.

That got the young dragon's attention, and he left to fetch Milgasea, leaving Lina with Nes as he studied her carefully while Lina pretended to be interested in an unusual rock formation. When Milgasea arrived, he greeted her by asking, "What brings you here, human girl?"

"What brought me here the last time." Lina said, cutting straight to the chase. "Take me to the Claire Bible."

Milgasea looked at her as though she was crazy, "And why should I do that?'

"Because you owe me!" Lina stated, "I didn't want to go back to Sairaag, but because you twisted my arm I went and I had to kill a friend to save the world and end the Kouma War for you. So the way I see it, you owe me a big favor, and I'm calling in."

Milgasea and Nes exchanged a bewildered glance. "You know the path you took to it years ago is gone."

"I also know there's another one." Lina said without missing a beat.

"It's trickier, and it'll take longer to get there." Milgasea continued.

"If it wasn't important, I wouldn't be here." Lina pointed out.

Milgasea was silent. Lina returned his gave without wavering. Finally he said, "Follow me, then."

* * *

Lina's second trip to the Claire Bible was worse than her first. The disorientation was worse, it lasted longer, and all of her worries about Dianna were laid bare before Milgasea. He could read her thoughts in this strange space. It wasn't fair. She couldn't read his.

Finally Lina reached the Claire Bible. The last time she was here she had so many things she wanted to ask but never had a chance to. She'd love to know the answers to so many of those questions. Yet now she only had two she wanted answered, and then she wanted to get home as quickly as possible. She took a deep breath and focused her attention so that she would remember everything the Claire Bible told her, and then she asked, "How can I tell for sure if a shard of Shabranigdu resides in a person's soul."

* * *

When Lina emerged from the cave with Milgasea, she was alarmed to learn that she had spent the entire day traveling to and from the location of the Claire Bible and it was now dusk. She had not slept or eaten for nearly twenty four hours. She was exhausted and tired and even more nauseous than when she got to the Kataart Mountains. But as soon as Nes transformed after he had been debriefed by Milgasea, she got on his back and he took off back to Zefiel City.

Lina was so exhausted she was terrified she would slip and fall. But somehow she managed to stay awake and hold on. As the hours passed and the first hints of sunlight appeared on the horizon Lina shouted, "Hurry it up! I can't wait another day!"

Nes ignored her. Lina felt her palms go sweaty. The spell had to be performed at sunrise. She could not live with the anxiety for another day!

When her cottage came into view she levitated off and charged into the house and straight for Dianna's room. "Where have you been?" Gourry shouted as she came in.

"No time to explain." She said as she opened the door to Dianna's room.

"Do you know how worried I've been?" he continued as Lina picked up Dianna, who opened her eyes in surprise. "And what do you think you are doing?"

"Get Minny." Lina ordered. She didn't think Minerva was affected. But she wanted to make sure.

"She has her reasons." Nes said quietly as he came in. Evidently Milgasea had shared with him what Lina had been asking about.

Gourry was confused and furious. But with Nes backing Lina and with Lina walking stoically out of the house with Dianna, it seemed like a far better idea to go along with it and ream Lina later. Gourry shortly caught up with her, holding Minerva, as he tried to remember the last time he had been so scared and angry.

Lina was one pace below a full on run as she raced to get to an uninhabited area with a good deal of sun. Already the horizon was bathed with an orange glow. They didn't have much time left! Finally Lina found a place that would be perfect and she sat Dianna down on the grass. "Stay still." Lina commanded.

Dianna looked at her quizzically, the sleep still heavy in her eyes. "Set her by Di." Lina told Gourry, who put Minerva by her sister.

Lina started chanting. It was a simple spell, but well guarded. Considering both Hellmaster Phirbizzo and Dynast Grausherra had attempted to resurrect Shabranigdu by finding the human vessels who contained his soul, the followers of Ceiphied had a vested interest in making sure its knowledge did not go far.

As Lina chanted she studied Dianna and Minerva's shadows. Minny's remained solid and black. Dianna's, on the other hand, started to take a reddish hue. The hue intensified until it was unmistakably red. Lina felt a hand clasp her heart as she stared at it and felt her legs turn to jelly. "Why is her shadow red?" Gourry asked.

Dianna looked from Lina to Gourry, fear written all over her face. Lina started grinding her teeth, the sound loud enough to be discerned by the others in the party. "I'll take the girls and let you explain." Nes said quietly.

Tears ran down Lina's face as Nes took the girls back to the cottage. She could feel Gourry's eyes on her. She knew he was waiting for an explanation. He deserved one. But how could she say it? The news was devastating. Never before had Lina wished so desperately that she was wrong. But she hadn't been. Lina's worst fears had been confirmed. Dianna was tainted.

"She's like Luke." Lina whispered, unable to meet his eye. "And Rezo. Shabranigdu sleeps within her."

* * *

Lina stared at Dianna as she slept alone in the room. They had moved Minny's crib out of there. They simply couldn't leave the baby alone with her. And even though Lina had witnessed Dianna's brutality it was still hard to reconcile the fact that the soul of Shabranigdu slept within her. In sleep she looked so tranquil, and with her pale blonde hair and symmetrical, round features so angelic. How could such a beautiful child harbor something so evil? How could something so foul be born from the love she and Gourry had for each other?

 _And now I'm going to have another one._ Lina thought. She had suspected for some time that she was pregnant again. She'd confirmed it after she'd had breakfast. Lina could not remember ever being so terrified. Minerva had suffered so much abuse at the hands of Dianna, and now they were going to bring another helpless infant into the mix. But then she and Gourry had stupidly thought that Dianna would outgrow it. And Minny was such a delightful baby that they just decided to take no measures either way and let nature take its course. If a third child came along, it was destiny, if not, then that was also fate.

It now seemed a completely foolhardy decision.

Lina looked at the pillow that cushioned Dianna's head and closed her eyes as her thoughts once again tread down an unthinkable path. Only she was thinking it. Life would be so much easier without Dianna. Not to mention safer, not just for the family but for the world. And Lina had Minny and the upcoming baby to think about. Two innocent children who didn't need to be raised with a sister who housed Shabranigdu in her soul. It would be so easy to hold the pillow over Dianna's face and claim in the morning that she was fine when she went to sleep.

Gourry wouldn't know. After learning what Dianna was he took to his bed. While Lina's family had never told her how bad his depression had become when she was comatose, she had heard from some friends who had visited at the time about his death wish. It had been hard for Lina to believe it. She'd never seen that side of him. But now that she'd seen him in the grip of a depressive episode it scared her. She wasn't sure she could face this without him by her side.

She could ease the burden on them all, including Dianna. It made perfect sense when she thought of her sweet innocent girl, her soul held hostage by Shabranigdu, forcing her to do things she didn't want to such as torturing cats and beating up her sister. Dianna was suffering, too. She could quell her suffering. It would hurt the family but they would mourn and grieve and move on without her, focus on raising their remaining children (what if the third one had a fragment of Shabranigdu as well? What are the odds of it happening twice in the same family?)

Lina felt her hands shake as she started walking to the bed. Birthing Dianna had nearly killed her, but all Lina's fears and worries at the time had been focused on losing her baby. The baby she was now going to kill. She wondered if she should cast a sleep spell first just to make sure Dianna didn't wake up and fight her. But she couldn't bring herself to incapacitate her any further. It was bad enough killing her own daughter in cold blood in her sleep.

The front door opened with a bang, and Lina froze. She didn't need to turn around to know who was there. "Get out and sit down." Luna said.

Lina shut her eyes, exhaled in relief, and walked out into the living room, closing the door behind her so Dianna would not be disturbed. "Where's your husband?" she asked.

"Indisposed." Lina replied.

"Make him presentable and get him out here then." Luna said sharply.

Lina shook her head, but went into their bed room all the same. Gourry was sitting on the edge of the bed and staring blankly at the wall, which was progress from lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. And it made her job easier. He turned to look at her, his eyes red rimmed. "Sis has something to say to us." Lina said.

He nodded and followed her out. Quietly they sat on the couch as Luna considered them. "So you know?" Lina asked.

"Nes stopped by." Luna explained as she moved in front of them, and then suddenly she struck Lina.

"What was that for!?" Lina yelled as she stood up.

"For asking the Claire Bible all of the wrong questions." Luna replied as she stared Lina down. "I had to go and do my own footwork with my own vastly inferior sources."

"Well excuse me for having other things on my mind!" Lina snapped.

"You can't afford to let your love of your daughter blind you to being smart about this." Luna persisted.

"Don't you think I know that?!" Lina shot back, "But what else is there to do? I asked the Claire Bible how we remove his soul from hers. Only in death will she be free!"

"And what happens to Shabranigdu's soul after that?" Luna asked.

Lina folded her arms across herself. "He gets reincarnated and makes some other families' life a living hell?"

"Bingo. Now, which soul is stronger, the human or Shabranigdu's?" she asked.

"Huh?" Lina said.

"Don't you think there's a reason that you've seen him reborn twice in a lifetime? After a millennia of reincarnations he's been reborn three times, two of those in the last twenty years. Why is that?"

Lina looked at Gourry, but he was looking dimly at Luna, and she could tell by the look on his face that unless Luna had some magical cure up her sleeve he wasn't too interested in what she was saying. "Damned if I know." Lina finally said as she flung herself on the couch.

"Don't you remember Gaav?" Luna asked.

"Course I remember Gaav. Kinda hard to forget." Lina replied.

"And why he turned against the monster race?" Luna persisted.

Lina took a deep breath, "His soul merged with the human one."

"People who are born with a fragment of Shabranigdu in their souls tend to have very long life spans. And until now, Shabranigdu has held less sway with his hosts. The walls cordoning him from the human soul have been strong and it's taken a lot more to break them down." Luna explained as her words swam through the funk that Lina's brain was in, "But with each cycle the walls cordoning off Shabranigdu from the human soul get weaker and flimsier. Especially considering his previous hosts tend to come to violent ends, ends marked by being murdered that only strengthen Shabranigdu. This is why Luke merged with Shabranigdu when he was so young while Rezo and Lei Magnus went for centuries, and most of the people who have been burdened with him in the past died without rebirthing him."

Luna let her words sink in as Lina felt knots form in her stomach, "So you're saying Shabranigdu is more powerful in Dianna than he was in Luke, or Rezo?"

Luna nodded. "Exactly. And since she's so young, she has no way to separate her feelings and actions from his. He just takes over, especially when she's mad or feeling some other negative emotion."

"Was…" Gourry started, his voice very strained, "Was it because I rejected her?"

"Idiot." Luna said, "Dianna's soul was corrupted before she was born. Why else do you think my sister found carrying and bearing her both painful and nearly lethal? Shabranigdu was inflicting and feasting on her pain. It's even possible the Shabranigdu realized who the mother of the baby he infected was while she was growing within Lina and he did everything in his power to kill her."

Lina shuddered as she put a hand on her stomach and wondered if the third one would be so afflicted. Luna raised an eyebrow as she noticed the gesture. Lina said, "So you're saying if Dianna dies, Shabranigdu will merely be reincarnated again, and the walls between him and the next host even thinner, and it will be easier for Shabranigdu to be reborn."

"Exactly. Especially if she is murdered." Luna said. "We're entering a critical time period. Shabranigdu's soul merges more fully with the human soul with each reincarnation. Until now one of the factors in his defeat has been that the human he infected didn't truly want to see the world destroyed and held him back. That can change as he gains more power over the human soul and can subvert it to his will.

"Here's the good news. Because of your exploits, we're in better shape than the monster race right now. And Ceiphied wants to push through while he has the advantage."

"Meaning?" Gourry asked.

"Meaning you two distinguished yourselves by bringing down Shabrangidu. Twice. So when Shabrangdu's current host died, and the timing was fortuitously around the time Lina got pregnant, he arranged for Shabranigdu's soul to merge with Dianna's."

"Fortuitously?" Lina repeated, her voice a low growl, "What's fortuitous about this?" Then she snapped, "I don't want to kill Mazoku anymore! I've done more than my fair share! Two sevenths of Shabranigdu, Hellmaster, Gaav, his minions, I've done enough!"

"So you expect him to rest on your laurels when we're finally making progress in this war?" Luna replied coolly, "If we don't press in while we have the advantage, then the Mazoku will lick their wounds, recover, and hit us harder."

"That's not our problem!" Lina protested. Then she hung her head, "Wasn't our problem."

"He wants Shabranigdu reborn in her, doesn't he?" Gourry asked morosely, "And then we'll have to kill her, too."

"That it likely how he would prefer for this to play out. But the way I see it, that's Plan B. Last resort."

Lina and Gourry looked up at her. "What's Plan A then?" Lina asked.

"Humans do have a desire for self-destruction." She looked pointedly at Gourry, who flushed and avoided her gaze, "But for most the desire to live outweighs whatever pain life throws at them. Most of us keep trudging along stubbornly through this life, regardless of how much pain we're in or how crippled we become. We fight till our last breath. Mazoku, naturally, only desire destruction. If Dianna ever gets to that point where she desires destruction enough to align with Shabranigdu, then we will have no choice but to kill her. However, if she dies a natural death, whether it be from a heart attack or a stroke or cancer, if she makes a choice to continue to live in spite of whatever shit life throws at her, then that will have a powerful influence on the next regeneration cycle when the soul of Shabranigdu merges even more fully with his human host.

"Because if Dianna's desire for life overrides her desire for death, if she fights for her life until her dying breath, it will fortify the human soul. The next human to house him will be tremendously powerful and better able to handle the rage and desire for torment that afflicts those who harbor him. The risk of another situation that resembled what happened to Luke, Rezo, or Lei Magnus lessens. The human will subdue Shabranigdu. Hopefully we would even see a seventh of Shabranigdu turn against himself."

"Like what happened with Gaav turning against the monster race." Lina said quietly.

"The human element is very corrupting." Luna stated.

Lina brought her hands over her face, "I'd love to gain access to your sources."

"I'd love to gain access to the Claire Bible. I'd have come a lot better prepared than you."

"Rub it in." Lina said.

There was silence for a moment, and then Gourry asked tentatively, "How do we ensure that Dianna wins over Shabranigdu?"

"First, let's hope she inherited her mother's zest for life."

Gourry heard the reprieve in her voice, and was torn between feelings of shame for how weak he was after Dianna was born and being tired of having his mistake drilled into him repeatedly. Lina's parents had moved on, Luna had not. "Knock it off, he asked a good question." Lina spat.

"Let me have her." Luna said, "I can help her identify when Shabranigdu is asserting his influence on her, and teach her how to fight and control him."

"No way!" Gourry said as Lina bit her lip. "Not after how you treated Lina growing up."

He looked to Lina for support, but found that she was staring at the coffee table. "Lina?"

"I'm pregnant." She said quietly, "And I don't know how I can deal with this while taking care of Minny and another baby!"

He stared at Lina in shock, and then he persisted, "I promised Dianna I would make it up to her!"

"You don't know how to train her. I do." Luna said, "And in a few months Lina is going to be very overwhelmed. She's not going to have the time to put into training Dianna while tending to two babies and protecting them from her.

"Besides, it's not as if I'm taking her to a new town." Luna said, "You'll see her at the store every day."

He looked at Lina and put a hand on her knee, "But you know how jealousy sets her off." He said, "She's going to see this as us getting rid of her and replacing her with the new baby."

Lina nodded, "He's got a point. I mean, does she really need to be around you constantly?"

"We'll do this, during the day you get to train Dianna, and you'll teach me how to train her, and when I'm home with Lina, Dianna needs to be there, too." Gourry said, "We can tell her she's old enough for training so she doesn't feel like she's being put out."

Lina visibly relaxed. Even though the situation was still horrible, at least they had a direction to go in and a path to follow. And having something to do had revived Gourry. Somehow they would make this work.

And if that still proved too difficult, Dianna could move in with Luna later.

"I think that's a sensible solution." Lina said.

Luna stared at them, her expression blank. "In some ways this is the harder and riskier route than seeing Shabranigdu reborn."

"We'll manage." Lina said.

"You still need to make your Plan B as strong as possible." Luna said, staring at her meaningfully.

Lina looked at the floor. Luna didn't have to explicitly state what she was hinting at, but Lina knew nevertheless. She wanted Lina to join the guild again and find a safer way to destroy Dianna should the need arise than a Giga Slave. She wanted her to find a way to kill her own daughter. And even though Lina had been thinking of doing that, there was something different about following a whim and spending years researching the method. Lina's stomach turned. "Unless you think Dianna is going to go off the deep in in the next five years, then there's still time before I need to pull myself out of retirement."

"What about after we die, though?" Gourry asked.

"Huh?" Lina said.

"Luna said that Di will need to die a natural death. She also said that people with a shard of Shabranigdu tend to live very long lives. Who will look after her after Lina and I die?"

Lina bit her lip worriedly as Luna said, "That's what siblings are for."

Gourry inhaled. "That's a hell of a burden."

Luna stood up and squared her shoulders, "Perhaps, but there's also certain peace of mind that comes when you know exactly what your purpose in life is. Now I really must be going. I have an early shift in the morning."

"Bye." Gourry said quietly as she showed herself out.

Lina shifted on the couch so she was leaning against him. He wrapped an arm around her. "Peace of mind?" Lina muttered, "I call bull shit. I hated it when Phibrizzo manipulated me, and I hate it now that Ceiphied is doing that same."

He stroked her hair reassuringly, "Well, look at the bright side." He said, even if his words did seem a little forced.

"What bright side?" Lina asked.

"At least this means we aren't the world's worst parents." He said.

Lina was quiet for a moment, and then she laughed.

* * *

Even though Lina's third pregnancy and delivery were without incident, it wasn't until she checked the newly born Atalanta's shadow under the rising sun and found it black that Lina's mind eased. And as Dianna was older and at some level able to understand that another baby was on the way, Dianna's first meeting with Attie was infinitely gentler than it was with Minny. If anything, Dianna saw Attie as her baby and took her under her wing in a way she never did with Minny.

While Dianna spent hours with Luna working on controlling her emotions, her progress was slow and plodding. Luna said it was because she was still too young to effectively control him and it would get better as Dianna grew older and grew more competent at controlling herself, and him. Still, Lina felt a part of her die every time she heard from other mothers how scared Dianna made their children. Yet with the stringent safeguards they implemented, Minny was spared further abuse and Attie saw very little of it, and the neighborhood kids were unharmed.

Indeed, nurturing the relationship between the three of them growing up was a challenge in and of itself. All sibling relationships are fraught with some degree of jealousy, and as it was the emotion that triggered Dianna's rage more fiercely than any other, her sisters were frequent targets, especially Minerva, who grew into a powerful and accomplished sorceress. And while Dianna was loathed, Min was adored, and as she grew older and insisted that she was too old to be called by such a babyish name as "Minny" and wanted to have friends over for parties, it was hard that they could only accommodate her on her first request.

The rivalry Dianna and Min had eclipsed that of the one Lina had had with her own sister, and was more dangerous. But somehow it was contained. Dianna, Min and Attie were very aware of what was at stake. So they found ways to support each other.

When Attie was five Lina finally approached the guild with her research on the Lord of Nightmares and asked for funding. It turned her stomach that she was looking for a last ditch effort to kill Dianna should the need arise, but what else could she do? Lina threw herself into her research even as disgust filled her. Especially when she compared herself to Gourry, who learned as much about how Luna was going about training Dianna and started applying it with her. As her mother she should have had those skills, but Gourry was better at it.

He could reach Dianna in a way that no one else could. Lina met fire with fire, and the resulting explosion threatened to be lethal. But Gourry had a way of talking Dianna down. Especially as she hit her teenage years and seemed prone to the same fits of melancholy that occasionally afflicted Gourry, only worse. In that way, they understood each other on a level that Lina didn't.

And then there was the question of the other three people walking the planet who harbored Shabranigdu within their soul. Dianna tried to find out who they were, but was largely unsuccessful. Min researched it. And when Attie went traveling she kept an eye out for people who bore similar struggles to her sister and knew the spell to expose Shabranigdu lying within their souls. But so far their searches had been fruitless.

But they had enough worries on their hands merely with Dianna. Dianna's first meltdown came, and Gourry talked her down. She met Kenneth and, despite Lina and Gourry's objections, married him and attempted a go at a normal life. She had her second meltdown. And then her third after her marriage dissolved. But the family persisted. Considering the alternative, there was no other path.


	6. Chapter 6

"So, what are you going to do?" Lina asked, and despite her best efforts she could not completely keep the nerves from her voice.

Zel set down his cup of tea with a sigh as a mix of emotions overwhelmed him. Now that he had calmed down and heard more it was easier to understand the impossible situation they were in. Even if it still gave him the chills to think about what Dianna was. "I won't go spilling your secret if that's what you're asking." He said.

Lina looked at the floor as she tried to keep her relief from showing, "I've got to get Pomona from school."

She left, leaving Zel with Gourry. Zel shook his head in disbelief. The idea of having a child like Rezo was mortifying. It also wasn't something he would have ever worried about happening to him. Just like Lina and Gourry had never thought it would happen to their children. It was enough to make him want to commit to a lifetime of celibacy.

Zel looked at Gourry, "Do you really think you can guide her to a peaceful death?"

"We've kept her going this long." He said as he stirred his tea.

"But today…"

"Today was another victory."

"But don't you get tired of the burden? Wouldn't letting Shabranigdu awaken and getting it over with be easier?"

Gourry set his cup down firmly, "We've fought that battle and won in the past, yes. But who's to say we will in the future? Besides, then my daughter would be dead." He shrugged, "It's not like there's a perfect solution to this. We're doing our best, fumbling through it may be, but at the end of the day we're all still here, so we keep going forward."

A door opened and Attie walked in with Dianna. "The bath is free." Attie said, glancing at her father's bloodstained clothes.

Dianna plopped down on the couch as Gourry stood up, "I guess I should tidy up."

He disappeared, leaving Zel alone with Attie and Dianna. He wasn't aware of how desperate he was for Attie to stay until she announced, "I ought to go and let Grandma and Grandpa know everything is okay."

Zel opened his mouth to protest as Dianna said, "Yes, I suppose you ought."

And without asking if he would like to join her, Attie disappeared out the front door, leaving him alone with Dianna. After a few moments of awkward silence she snapped, "Sit down, I don't bite."

 _That's not what I've heard._ He thought to himself even as he sat on the chair furthest from her. She stared at him coolly, and he returned her gaze in kind.

"Occasionally I catch a whiff of his thoughts." She stated, and then she paused, waiting for a reaction from him. When it became clear that he was going to remain unmoved she continued, "It doesn't happen often. He's very guarded with me, he doesn't want me spilling his secrets to my parents, or worse my aunt."

Zel felt gooseflesh erupt all over but did his best to maintain a calm demeanor as she continued, "When I first saw you was one of those times. Some of Rezo Shabranigdu's memories flashed before me, briefly. In some ways, I guess, I had it easier than him."

He took a breath and hoped his voice was steady as he asked, "What makes you say that?"

Dianna shrugged, "I know where the rage comes from at least, and why it feels so satisfying to see someone in pain."

Zel could not help but look at the ground, thoroughly spooked out of his mind now. He wondered if she was enjoying his discomfort. Dianna raised her eyebrows and grinned as she continued, "Shabranigdu didn't have as big of a hold on Rezo as he does me, but because I have the awareness of his presence that Rezo never did I can fight him in ways Rezo never could."

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.

"Isn't that what you've wanted to know for so long?" she asked as she tossed her hair over her shoulder, "Or at least since you learned that Rezo harbored Shabranigdu in his soul?"

He fixed her with his best blank stare. It was so much easier to summon it when he was a chimera. It was so much easier to be brave! But in his original and highly fought for flesh and blood body he was so vulnerable. "Was Rezo acting on Shabranigdu's behest when he mutilated me?"

Dianna stared out of the window quietly for a moment, a small smile playing at her lips. Finally she said, "I don't think Rezo was capable of love. Shabranigdu made it impossible for him to feel it."

Zel blinked, unsure of what to make of her response, "And?"

"And indeed." She said as she stretched.

His irritation flared, "You bring all of this up and that's all the answers you have for me?"

She grinned, "You grew up with the man. Were you really expecting a tidy resolution?"

His hands balled into a fist as he stormed out onto the porch. Instantly down the road he could see Lina walking with Pomona, Min and her grandsons. That they were bringing the children around Dianna after the day's events only fueled the flames of his anger. He saw the group stop as they noticed Attie coming up behind them, and once she joined them they continued to the house.

The children started to run ahead of the adults, and soon Pomona could be heard crying, "Daddy! Daddy!"

The screen door opened and Gourry stepped out, arms wide as she ran up the steps, a paper in her hand, "I won!" she exclaimed.

"You did!" he said as he was soon surrounded by his grandsons. "Let's get inside."

Somehow he shuffled them inside, and Lina, Min, and Attie trailed behind on the steps. Lina held out the door for her daughters and continued to hold it open even after they disappeared within, looking at Zel meaningfully. With a sigh he got up and came in, watching in befuddlement as he found Min and Dianna locked in a tight embrace. He shook his head. After all that Min had endured because of Dianna it was inconceivable in his mind that there could be a shred of genuineness in the embrace. Besides, hadn't Dianna said that Shabranigdu prevented Rezo from loving? Shouldn't that hold true for herself?

But Min pulled away and patted Dianna on the elbow and Dianna wrapped an arm around her shoulders as Orion and Henry started clamoring for a drink. "I made some lemonade earlier, Mom." Dianna said, and she went to the ice box and pulled out a pitcher while Gourry scrambled for cups and Lina exasperatedly snapped at the children to sit down and wait patiently.

Eventually they started doling out lemonade and cookies. When Attie asked Zel if he wanted a glass he refused. There was no way he was drinking anything prepared by Dianna. He watched quietly as the kids settled down and ate their cookies while the adults gathered around, joking and laughing, giving one another a pat on the head or the back. Zel noted that very rarely was one member of the family not touching another in some way, whether it be leaning against them or an arm around the shoulder. Gourry's need for physical affection seemed to have been passed to his children and grandchildren, and pats on the knees or back from person to person moved as quickly as the jokes the threw.

Soon the kitchen was filled with warmth and laughter so diametrically opposed to what had happened just hours before that Zel was left feeling incredulous. And it was making him strangely angry, as if they were trying to cover up and hide the ugliness that underlaid their life. Especially as he watched Dianna laugh as she put her hands on Orion's shoulders. That they were even letting her close to him, to touch him angered him. "I fail to see what's so funny." He muttered.

Only Lina heard him, and barely, "What was that, Zel?" she asked.

He cleared his throat as the eyes of the Inverse-Gabriev clan turned to stare at him, "I said, I fail to see what is so funny!"

Lina's demeanor changed from jovial to defensive in an eye blink, "Well, seeing as that you never actually developed a sense of humor…"

He shook his head, "Part of Shabranigdu…"

"Yeah, we've known that for a while now." Lina snapped, "What should we do, spend our lives boo hooing that? That would be sure to drive anyone towards destroying the world."

"But how can you act like nothing is wrong?"

"So just because things aren't peachy perfect means we aren't allowed to have a laugh?" Lina asked.

"This is quite a lot of steps below 'peachy perfect.'" Zel maintained.

"Fine." Lina said, "Be that as it may, if I can find a way to laugh, I'm going to do it. I may not have chosen this, but it doesn't mean I can't find a way to be happy."

He shook his head in disbelief as Gourry said, "You know, that was something I felt you never got back in the day."

"Huh?" Zel said.

"I mean, yes, you had that cursed body, but you also had someone who loved you despite it."

Zel flushed, alarmed that somehow the spotlight had been turned onto his issues as Gourry continued, "I mean, most of us have to spend our lives wondering if people love us for ourselves or because we're handsome or wealthy or some other shallow reason. But because you were a chimera, you had the freedom of knowing that if someone fell in love with you, it would be for you."

"I fail to see how this has anything to do with your daughter." Zel said as his regrets about not even attempting to make it work with Amelia rose.

"Things may be bad, but with the right people around you you can endure the bad times. And they may not be perfect, but if you find someone you want to be with, even when they're at their worst, and they also want to be with you when you're at your worst, you've found someone special."

Before Zel could think of a response, someone knocked on the door. "I'll get it." Dianna said, and she frowned when she opened it, "Robbie?"

"It's my sister, you have to come."

Dianna frowned, "But she's not due for another six weeks. Are you sure it's not a false alarm?"

"Her water broke!" the boy maintained.

"In that case, let me get my bag." Dianna said as she walked towards her room, "I'm off my game today, usually I have a sense for when one of them is going to pop."

"Want some lemonade while you wait?" Gourry asked Robbie, who shook his head and fidgeted anxiously as he kept staring at the road. Zel had the feeling that being on the porch was extremely discomforting to the youth.

Dianna's hands were shaking slightly as she walked towards the door. "Guess this happened to get me back up on that horse." She quipped as Gourry put a hand on her shoulder.

"You'll do fine." He said encouragingly.

"It's her first child. Don't wait up for me." She said.

The door closed behind her, and Min sighed, "This will be good for her, build her confidence up."

"Was it me, or did Robbie seem nervous?" Gourry asked.

"It's not every day you become an uncle for the first time." Lina said.

"Can we go play?" Pomona asked.

"Yeah, get some sun while you still can." Lina said, and in a torrent of energy the kids ran out. She started gathering cups and plates. After a pause Lina said, "I guess you aren't going to want to stay here anymore."

Zel squirmed. Much as he didn't want to insult them, he also could not fathom the idea of staying under the same roof as Dianna, "Well, I never was one for company."

Lina shook her head as she started to pump water into the basin, "I get it."

"I'll show you to the guest house at the Sorcerer's Guild." Min said quietly.

Zel felt a need to explain, "You have a…"

"Don't." Lina said, "It's easier this way."

"See you around, Zel." Gourry said quietly.

Feeling slightly ashamed, Zel followed Min out of the house. Lina and Gourry had been so accepting of him when he had his cursed chimera body. But this was different. On the inside he was still Zel. But inside Dianna rested the soul of the person who had mutilated him. Being around her was not something he could fathom.

He looked at Min, who kept her face impassive as she walked beside him. His eyes fixated on the necklace that concealed her scars. Before he could question whether or not it was a good idea to ask, he found himself saying. "I don't get how you can continue to be around her, considering all that she's done to you."

Min raised an eyebrow, "I don't expect that you would understand the complexity of our relationship in the time it would take us to get to the guest house."

"Your parents told me about how she brutalized you growing up."

Min sighed, "That's one way of telling it, yes. But that's not how I see it."

"How do you see it then?"

"That all her life she's been battling the being within her. She fights him. Sometimes he wins and takes over, and I get hurt, but it's him, not her." She looked at him and smiled wryly, "Surely you're thinking I'm making excuses for her. That may be, but it is what works for us. It's what keeps us moving forward, so even if it's a lie or partial truth, I'll continue to believe it. And let me tell you this, despite all that I have suffered, if given a choice between Dianna's struggles or mine as being her sister, I would choose mine, over and over again! No question."

Min folded her arms across herself, her face set and resolved. Before Zel had time to think about what she had said he noticed that her brow furrowed. "What's this about?" she asked.

He looked ahead and saw a crowd. Angry shouts started to puncture the air as they milled aggressively around something that Zel could not see. Someone was running away from the crowd, and as she drew closer Zel recognized Gretelle.

"Gretelle?" Min asked, "What is it?"

Indeed, Gretelle looked rather shaken. "Is it true?" she asked.

Min shook her head, "Is what true?"

"What Morris says? That Dianna has a piece of Shabranigdu in her soul?"

Min's face went red. "Get my parents."

Min started to run towards the crowd without checking to see what Gretelle was doing, and Zel followed her, the angry shouts and fear intensifying as they started to battle their way through the crowd. Zel was suddenly reminded of his worst nightmare when he was a chimera, of being surrounded by an angry, fearful mob.

Zel heard Morris before he saw him, "No one will want to be delivered by you anymore, you're not even welcome in this town anymore, you might as well let him take over so we can put him down!"

"DO you honestly think a third rate wizard such as yourself could take down Shabranigdu?" Min asked as she drew to the center where Morris was confronting Dianna.

"Even your mother is prepared to put her down. That's what she's been researching for the last two decades!" Morris persisted as he ignored Min and focused on Dianna, "Your own mother knows it would be better if you were dead."

Zel glanced at Dianna, who was looking cool and defiant. Only the shaking of her hands betrayed how rattled she was. "It's lunacy, letting her live!" Morris continued, "We need to take her down and the other people housing his soul and kill him one by one."

"Just listen to yourself!" Min said, "This is Shabranigdu! Not the scores of lesser demons who occasionally plague us. This is in a completely different league! And if you think you have the power to take Shabranigdu down, then you're deluding yourself."

"You underestimate me." Morris said as he finally turned to look at her. "It's too much of a risk to continue letting her life. Especially around us."

"Yeah, and if Shabranigdu is reborn in Atlas City and destroys the world, it would be just as destroyed here and as it is there. She has to live somewhere." Min said. She then looked around at the crowd, "Nothing about Dianna has changed, only what you know about her. She's still the person who saved your wife, Skye, when she started to bleed out, and was the first one to successfully deliver a living child to you, Agnes. How many children had you lost in childbirth?"

Some people in the crowd started to shift anxiously as Min wrapped an arm around Dianna, "I take it there's not a laboring mother?"

"Not today." Dianna said. "It was a ruse."

"We're going home then." Min said.

Min started to walk with Dianna, and the crowd moved in angry waves, blocking Zel's view. One of the sisters screamed, "Get off!"

Zel saw someone lift their arm to throw a rock and he grabbed it. From behind him he noticed movement and ducked as someone swung at him. Suddenly he was caught in a group of people pushing and the swinging of fists. He couldn't even draw his sword in such close quarters!

"Dil Brand!"

There was an explosion as people were blown back, but it allowed Min and Dianna to continue without seriously injuring anyone, and stunned the people around Zel enough to abandon their fight.

"That was heavy handed, Di!" Min said disapprovingly.

"I was provoked!" Dianna insisted.

"Windy Shield!" Zel called, just in time to deflect a bottle that was hurled at them.

But the crowd surged again, and Zel felt something hard hit the back of his head and he fell to the ground. He cried out as the crowd surged forward and people started to walk over him, trampling him under their feet as he lost sight of where Dianna and Min were and blacked out.


	7. Chapter 7

It hurt to open his eyes. Zel moaned. His entire body ached and he just wanted to sleep. But he didn't need to open his eyes to know he was in danger. He could sense the bloodlust around him and heard the voices of the angry mob rather well. It sounded as though Min was defending them while Dianna knelt next to him, chanting a Resurrection spell.

They had to get out of there!

He opened his eyes and tried to move, but to his alarm found that he couldn't. Dianna paused in her chanting, "Your spine was broken. Lie still." She informed him before she continued chanting.

In a flash of panic Zel realized he was living one of his worst nightmares. Only in reality he was a fragile human and not the loathsome chimera. A mob wanted to destroy them and he couldn't even move to defend himself. Worse, Min and Dianna likely could have escaped were it not for him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Min defending them. He wondered where Lina and Gourry were, or if they even knew about the mob. What if Gretelle had never made it to their house?

Zel could just see the mob out the corner of his eye, "You two should run."

"With the wounds you have you wouldn't stand a chance." Min said as she gritted her teeth in frustration, "Ugh, would it really be that bad if I lobbed a few flare arrows at them?"

Dianna was so absorbed in her chanting that she didn't reply. "All this power, and still no way to disperse a crowd without harming them." Zel commented bitterly.

"I must remember to put some time into researching that." Min quipped as she laughed bitterly, "Windy Shield!"

A bottle broke against the wind barrier, but the crowd surged forward again. Zel saw a man run up behind Dianna with a knife in his hand, "Behind you!" he yelled.

But Dianna did not pause in her chanting. Min was too busy holding the crowd off from her end and Zel couldn't move. The man grabbed Dianna by the shoulder and drove the knife into the back of her neck. Her blood spilled onto him as she slumped forward over him.

As quickly as she was killed, she was pulled off of him, "I got her!" the man yelled as people cheered. An explosion went off to Zel's right, and Zel recognized Lina's voice even as he couldn't make out what she was saying as he drifted again into unconsciousness.

* * *

In the room next to his, a child was screaming. Zel shot up in bed as a door from the room next to his slammed open. "Daddy!" he heard Pomona cry.

Zel took a deep breath as he oriented himself. He was in the room he had been staying at in Lina and Gourry's house. He sat up, and exhaled in relief. He could move again. Somehow he had survived. From the next door he heard Gourry comfort Pomona, "I promise, nothing bad is going to happen to you. We'll keep you safe."

"But Dianna…"

"Hush." He said. "We won't let it happen to you."

Zel felt sick. He had survived, Dianna had not. There was a rustling of bedclothes, "Mommy, Attie and I will be here all night. Nothing is going to happen to you." He said again, even as his voice broke.

"Daddy." She said, her voice choked with tears and she asked something that Zel could not discern.

The room was silent for a moment. But then he heard Gourry say, "I lost a lot of my family when I was young. And for a long time I was mad about it and couldn't see how I could ever be happy. But if those things hadn't happened, I never would have met your mother, we never would have saved the world and we wouldn't have had you. So, you might not believe me right now, but one day you will find peace with this and be happy again."

There was another silence, broken when Gourry said, "I'll sing a few songs, help you get to sleep."

Zel listened as Gourry tried to sing to Pomona. He was barely able to get through the first verse before he broke down. He tried again with the second verse, but it didn't sound like a song. "Attie, I can't." he eventually said.

"Daddy!" Pomona shrieked.

"Shh." Attie said, "Lie down, I'll help you sleep all night."

He heard Attie cast a sleep spell. "Is there a way to stop nightmares?" Gourry asked.

"I wish." Attie said, her voice heavy.

Quietly Zel got out of bed and walked to the door as Attie and Gourry had entered the hallway. "Your mother and I decided to move as soon as we can make the arrangements. We just can't stay where this happened." He said quietly.

"I guess I'll have my work cut out for me." Attie said, "Especially since Shabranigdu will have an even tighter grasp on the next child he inhabits."

"Or perhaps not." A new voice said, and Zel noticed a woman sitting on the couch with Lina, who he quickly deduced was the infamous sister he had heard about so often. "She was murdered, yes, but she was attempting to save a life while performing a Resurrection spell. The Power of the Gods was flowing through her the moment she died. She could have run and selfishly attempted to save herself, but she didn't. That's bound to have a positive effect in favor of the human for the next regeneration cycle."

Gourry sat next to Lina on the couch and wrapped an arm around her, his eyes uncharacteristically lifeless. Lina was slumped forward, her body rigid and her movements slow as though the shock had still not lifted. "Fine." She said, her voice unusually slow and heavy, "Bully for the human race and the gods. We're still leaving, and this time we're going to live quietly."

Luna laughed. "Do you honestly think that's possible? Lina, when you shine brightly enough to catch the attention of the Gods, the only time they'll let you rest is in death. It's not a question of if, but when. But hopefully you'll have a bit of a break. You're owed one I suppose. If you're lucky, Pomona will have time to reach adulthood before you're called into their service again."

Lina glared at her sister as tears ran down her face, "Get out."

Luna put a hand on her shoulder, "I know this hurts, but your efforts will not be in vain. I'll see you in the morning."

Lina raised her hand in warning, and Luna pulled away and exited the house. Lina took a deep, shuddering breath as she looked at Zel. She quickly looked away. "Looks like you survived."

He nodded, "If it wasn't for Dianna I wouldn't be alive."

Lina looked at the floor, but Gourry met his gaze as Zel continued, "I wish it hadn't taken this to help me see what you were doing, and what an incredible job of it you were doing. I was hasty in my judgement of you earlier. You have my sincerest condolences…and thanks."

Gourry gave him a small smile while Lina continued to gaze bitterly at the floor. Zel took a deep breath, "I'll give you some time."

He went out into the porch, followed by Attie. "Two minutes earlier and we could have saved her." Attie said.

He wondered why she had followed him onto the porch, and why she was telling him this. "Did Gretelle find you?"

"Gretelle?" Attie asked, "No, we were heading over to Min's place for dinner when we noticed the mob. Why?"

Zel felt his stomach twist as he realized that even Gretelle had abandoned them. "Nothing."

Attie shook her head, "She knew?"

Zel nodded, "Min had told her to get your parents."

Attie put a hand over her mouth. "Don't tell my mom."

He regarded her quietly, "Where will you go?"

"Don't know where my parents will go." She said. "I'll stick around for the funeral, see Mom and Dad off and settled. But the road always beckons."

"Running supplies for a new store? Or something else?"

She sighed, "Well, now some new family is going to struggle with this. In addition to the other families that already are. I have to find them."

He smiled, "You don't want to go and find your own destiny?"

Attie shrugged, "I didn't have to track down others like Dianna. I chose to do it. It's important work, and if what I've suffered through can help someone else, then it's for the better."

He considered Attie for a minute under the porch light and wondered why it was only now that it struck him just how lovely she was. But more than that, like him she had been harmed because Shabranigdu's soul had tainted a family member. And may be where he needed to be was helping her to help the other afflicted families. "If you don't mind, I'd like to join you."

She looked at him surprised, and he suddenly remember the conversation he had overheard her having with Lina. "I mean, if you already have someone you travel with, or…"

She laughed bitterly, "He was part of the mob. Love turned sour."

He shifted uncomfortably, "Look, my great-grandfather also had Shabranigdu in his soul. I know what it's like to live with someone like that. I can help."

"But what about your lecture circuit?" she asked.

"It's getting wearying, really. Giving the same speech on research that is now several years old." He bit his lip, "I know I put in a poor showing today, but I am good with a sword still. Becoming human hasn't taken that away. I'm not the sorcerer I was, but I can still help."

She thought for a moment, "I'd be glad to have a hand then."

They were silent for a moment. She stared at the stars, her expression morose. He stared at her. From inside the house he heard the movements of Lina and Gourry moving from the living room to their bedroom. Attie relaxed as she turned to the door, "Night."

"Do you think they'll be okay?" Zel asked.

"Who?" Attie replied.

"Your parents."

"Sure." Attie replied confidently. "Even with this loss, they still have each other."


End file.
